“How long are you staying?” Gonzalo asked.
I looked at Ainslie, but of course he hadn’t understood the Spanish. “Oh, a while,” I answered breezily.
They apologized for not having their burro available to help us. We assured them it was no problem—we had brought our own from Chatham, who liked us scarcely better than Chuclu. But he didn’t have a name.
Gonzalo waited patiently until the crew had loaded the burro into the panga, much against its will, then stared it in the eyes once it had arrived gratefully on land. The donkey stared back at him and let out noisy flatulence that made Gonzalo laugh like it had told him a hilarious joke. “His name is Pedo,” he said. I looked it up later. Translation: fart.
I asked after Elke and Heinrich. I was nervous to see them. Their not appearing on the beach was not a good sign. But Gonzalo said that they had tired of boats and visitors during the war and now didn’t come to the beach. I tried to imagine what they must be feeling, and failed.
We trekked up to our home and found it largely intact. Someone had obviously made use of the platforms and stuffed mattresses, and then the birds and rats had torn them apart. There were empty cans on what was left of the beds.
We gave up on the mattresses and slept on the floor in our bedrolls the first night. When we woke up the next morning, sipping our cold coffee from the flask I’d brought, Ainslie strategized bringing our belongings up from the beach. He would go down straightaway and check on poor Pedo, whom we had tied up to a tree for the evening. I was anxious, for what exactly, I didn’t know, until Ainslie said, “Go see her.”
“What?”
“You’re obviously not going to be able to do anything else until you do, so go ahead.”
“Who, Elke?”
Ainslie gave me a look that said, I’m no dummy.
“I’ll go later. We’ll get settled first.”
“Go now, Frances.”
I packed up a bit of water and some fruit leather and set off on the path toward Elke and Heinrich’s house. My anxiety grew as I traveled. What was I worried about? That she would be cold? That she would be warm? That it would be awkward?
The dog greeted me first, wary, but then sniffing my crotch she recognized me and bounded back to the house to let Elke know that someone known was arriving.
Elke’s hair had gone grayer in the time we’d been away, but otherwise she was her usual no-nonsense self. She was genuinely shocked to see me. Her jaw actually dropped, the way it does in cartoons, and she ran over, still holding the spoon she was stirring the pot on the stove with, hugging me and dripping liquid down my back.
“Franzi!” She kept saying my nickname and she alternately hugged me, drew back to look at me, and hugged me again.
From behind the house came a young woman in her late teens. “This is Brigitta,” Elke said in Spanish. “Gitta. Her father sent her here for the war, Gott sei Dank.”
She had Elke’s ruddy coloring, the same concentration of features in the middle of her face, the same open gaze. “Wie geht es Ihnen?”
“Es geht mir sehr gut,” I said.
“I knew you understood German!” Elke said in triumph in her native language.
“A bit,” I said. I considered telling her that I grew up speaking a version of it in my parents’ house, and decided not to. Perhaps not all confidences needed to be shared.
Any worries I’d had about awkwardness were immediately banished. Heinrich greeted me warmly as well and asked after Ainslie. I said he was very well. They were anxious to show me the improvements they’d made in the house since I’d left—a new hearth, a bigger table, a second room for Gitta, a pipe that led the stream directly into their kitchen.
“Oh, das ist deiner!” Elke said, handing me a pot I’d given her.
“Keep it,” I said. “It was a gift.” I answered her in English, and this, then, was how we began to communicate, each in our own language, which seemed somehow fairer and more honest. I was committed to honesty now. It was my religion.
“And your brother?” I said to Gitta. Elke’s eyes welled up and she walked out of the back of the house to the garden.
Gitta’s eyes turned to the floor. “He was fighting on the Russian front and he didn’t come home.”
“Entschuldigung,” I said. I had wanted to say “My condolences,” but instead I had apologized as though it were my fault that he was dead. There was a silence.
Elke came back into the house with some lemons. She was sunny again. “I will make lemonade.”
*
We settled back into life on Floreana, no spying necessary. “How are they justifying our pay?” I asked Ainslie.
“Dunno,” he said. “That’s the wonderful thing about government, no justification necessary. We’re integral to maintaining postwar peace.”
“Peace with blue-footed boobies?”
“Well, that quest for peace is what’s keeping you in the style to which you are accustomed.”
“Oh, what style!” I spread my arms out to indicate our hut. “The luxury.”
“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I would have it a bit differently, if I had my druthers. Plumbing would be nice, for instance. Perhaps some mail service.”
“People can’t even imagine what our life is like here, can they?” Ainslie asked.
It was around then that I went back to turning my diary into a book. Usually the entries were boring: “Garden, lunch of camotes and beans, cut wood, fed goat.” “Hiked to lava flow, Ainslie trapped a boar.” But I discovered that with a little embellishment, they were amusing. More amusing in the telling than in the living. There was interest in living like we did, and maybe we could earn a little money from publicity. We would need money. Even if we had escaped a discharge, Ainslie would be asked to retire at the first opportunity, of that I was sure.
So I busied myself in writing down all the things that happened (few though they were). I had always been told I had a flair for writing, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. We had come prepared this time, so I had more leisure time, and I used it well.
Every few days I would go to Elke’s or she would come over and we resumed our habit of dividing our grudge work. She was kind enough to give us plants to replenish our garden (they had been using it to grow manioc and roquette in our absence and let the other plants go to seed—she said it grew better with less shade than their garden had), so it was in decent shape.
We had agreed, tacitly, to wipe the slate clean. We had only one conversation about what happened, and it was full of metaphor, conducted in our new German-English habit. We were talking about our childhoods and I told her about a time, which actually happened, when a chicken had bitten me at Mrs. Keane’s farm in Nebraska. I had never seen a live chicken before, and this one was beautiful, with multicolored feathers and a fluffy head that looked made for making pillows. It pecked its way near to me, and I held still so that I wouldn’t scare it away. The underside of its beak was blue like a morning sky and before I thought about what I was doing, I put my hand out to touch it. The chicken struck first, pecking my hand two or three times before I could pull it away. Bright spots of blood appeared on my palm, and a searing pain caused me to cry out and jump up. When the housekeeper asked me what happened, I said I had been attacked, which provided no end of amusement. For months afterward the words “Attacked by a chicken!” could send the whole household into fits of hysteria.
Elke laughed, then turned serious. “Sometimes chickens attack,” she said, “when they feel threat.” We were no longer talking about chickens.
“I know,” I said, forgiving her. “Chickens are just being chickens. I should not have stuck my hand near its beak.”
“And still you love chicken.”
I smiled. “I do,” I said.
*
One day Ainslie came back to the house in a pitch of excitement.
“Franny, he’s here. He might be here!”
“Who?”
> “Guess! Wait, don’t bother, you’ll never get it.”
“Okay,” I said. “I won’t guess.”
“Hitler.”
“You’re right,” I said, “I wouldn’t have guessed that. Because he’s dead.”
“Ah, but is he?” Ainslie asked.
“Ainslie, that’s completely ridiculous.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “But how much fun will we have while we look for him?”
Indeed, it was a total flurry of activity by the Ecuadorian military, the coast guard, and the U.S. Air Force. For three days I cooked nonstop for the fifty-odd men who were on our island, no small feat considering that it was all done on a one-fire hearth. The best I can say is that no one died from my cooking.
While looking for Hitler, who was obviously not on the island, the search party came across some human remains, bones bleached white from years in the sun. Who knows whose they were or how long they’d been in repose. A mutineer exiled on the island. An intrepid, doomed survivalist. I thought it might even be the famous baroness, but the bones belonged to a man. They buried them in a grave near Black Beach, but before they did I caught a glimpse of the bones, white and straight like pieces of a ruined picket fence.
It made me think again about dying on the island, being buried there and having no one know it. This kind of morbid thinking cheered me up, ironically. If life meant so little, then nothing I could do would have that much of an effect. That’s why I’ve been able to stay silent about the war for so long. If I hadn’t destroyed the radio, then perhaps the war would have turned out another way, but the world would still have continued in its inexorable path around the sun.
I think Ainslie made a friend among these soldiers, for he was out all night and I only saw him the next morning at breakfast. We didn’t need the charade now of him pretending to have been searching through the night for a dictator who was not there. I knew what he was doing. I accepted it.
The soldiers were eventually satisfied that their wild-goose chase was going to produce no geese, and they left us to ourselves again. The quiet of the island was blissful after the assault of the army. We spent several days picking up after them—cigarette butts and pieces of paper, small parts of things in plastic and metal and wood that had come off of something or another that civilization had deemed necessary. We found handkerchiefs, socks, lighters, two dolls’ heads, a belt buckle, a mayonnaise jar, a coat hanger. It took the island a year to recover from the boots and machete damage. But recover it did, for man is but a momentary annoyance, a fly on nature’s back.
*
We spent two glorious years on Floreana, perhaps the best years of my life. I felt strong, secure. I was busy with activities that were central to life—growing food, cooking. I had good friends in Ainslie and Elke and Gitta. I missed Rosalie and her children, yes, but we wrote each other often. And I worked on my books.
I will give the navy this: They sent someone in person to tell us it was time to retire. The lieutenant wore his uniform on the long hike to our house, informed us briefly of his news, and left immediately. All intelligence agencies were to be incorporated into the new Central Intelligence Agency, eliminating Ainslie’s position. According to the navy, Ainslie had developed a cough, and it was best if he was removed from active duty. (His supposed cough was part of our cover story before the war as well. Not much imagination in the navy.) It was the first and only time I ever saw Ainslie cry. He waited until the officer left, and then he got into bed and wept. There was no consoling him, though I tried, rubbing his back. Finally I got in his bed with him and held him until he stopped shaking. We spent the night like that, and the next morning we began to pack.
*
When I think about the time that came after, the time that is most recent, I find that it is just outside the grasp of my memory, like in the morning before sleep fully leaves your eyes. Could we have stayed without the navy’s support? I suppose so. We had everything we needed to survive. But we were getting older, and if there’s one thing the islands do not tolerate, it is the weakness of old age. Animals routinely leave their wounded and aged to die. Perhaps it was time to give up our Swiss Family Robinson existence and try to make a bit of money before we became too old to work.
I’ll spare you the goodbye story. Everyone hugged. Everyone knew this time we would never see each other again. There were tears and promises, and a fond farewell look as the island receded into the horizon.
When I’m asked when I was happiest, as these group therapy sessions are always harping on (we old folks are prone to depression—no wonder, we’re about to die, it’s depressing), I always answer, “On Floreana.” There is a strange serenity that comes with only having to worry about your basic needs. It makes me think that primitive man might have been better off than we are today. But that’s a different discussion.
I became a teacher again and served a few more years. I was not the most inspirational educator, but I suppose there were worse. Ainslie found a job as a lecturer at the University of California, and we moved to the East Bay. It was nice being around students, all those young minds.
I saw Rosalie often. Ainslie and Clarence joined us occasionally and were generally on good behavior. I wouldn’t say they ever got to be friends, but they were happy acquaintances. As we got older, Ainslie spent less time away from home. We avoided boats, beaches, and camping, as well as all islands. When we wanted to celebrate, we went into San Francisco. The joy of having someone else cook your meals never wears off. Never until the Chelonia Manor, that is.
Clarence had a heart attack in 1950. Ainslie walked Barbara down the aisle at her wedding the following year, and her daughter calls me Granny (Rosalie is Nana). Ainslie actually did develop a cough (is the navy psychic?) and got imperceptibly weaker and weaker each month until Rosalie finally asked if I needed help caring for him.
The question shocked me. Help caring for whom? But then I saw that he could no longer leave the house, that he had trouble bathing without my help, that he was winded just walking down the hall. I had been wearing glasses that had the landscape I wanted printed on the inside, and now someone had wiped them clear again.
Though we had our navy pensions and my teacher savings, full-time in-home nursing care was expensive. The day after I mentioned this to Rosalie a man appeared, a man who was like Ainslie in that way, saying he’d been hired to help out during the day. I called Rosalie to tell her she shouldn’t have done that.
“It’s not for you, Fanny, it’s for me. I’m so sick of you telling me you can’t go anywhere.”
I didn’t believe her and told her so.
“What else am I supposed to do with the money?” She sighed. “It’s not really mine anyway. I just married it.”
When Ainslie died, Rosalie moved me into her house, and I finally got a taste of the finer life. I would like to say that I enjoyed having a staff, but actually it just felt like someone was always hovering. By then I had my own mobility problems and my own nurse.
It had never occurred to me that I would outlive Ainslie, as he was so much younger. I suppose that for a bit of time I felt untethered to the earth, like I might be blown back into the ocean by a stiff breeze. But Rosalie buoyed me. She drove me crazy; we bickered constantly, but the way sisters do, harmlessly.
When she fell and broke her hip, her son, Dan, moved us both into the Hebrew Home for the Aged. “Is it ‘aged’ or ‘age-ed’?” she asked the intake nurse.
The nurse smiled as though Rosalie were a babbling baby.
Maybe I do need an ear trumpet, I can’t hear anything over the sounds of the ladies lunching, their shrill voices competing with each other, the clatter of silverware on plates. Rosalie is wheeled onstage to accept her award, and everyone stands up to applaud her.
“What did you do during the war, Frances?” Susie asks. It takes me a minute to understand what she’s saying.
“Oh, I was a secretary.”
“It must have been a fascinating time.”
“That’s one word for it,” I say.
Susie laughs. “You and Rosalie have obviously been friends for a long time. You share the same emanations.”
A long time. “Since we were eight years old.”
Susie looks at me with admiration. “I bet you’ve got some stories to tell.”
“You have no idea,” I say.
*
Rosalie gets the front seat on the way home but wastes the experience by falling asleep immediately—I can tell by her head loll. I feel bad for the things I called Susie in my head. She’s been incredibly nice to two old ladies. We drive through the wooded roads, the windows open for a cool breeze. “You’ll tell me if you’re cold, Frances?” Susie calls back.
“It feels lovely.”
The air smells of pine and eucalyptus here, of mushrooms and sponge bark. I breathe in deeply.
We stop at the top of the circular driveway and Susie puts her hearse into park. “Nice ceremony,” Susie says. “I wish Rosalie’s children could have been there.”
“Israel is a long way to come for a luncheon. And Dan is so busy with work.”
“Hmm,” Susie says companionably. She reminds me of Elke, tolerant of silence, even with a near stranger. She could be Elke’s granddaughter, I think, if Gitta had moved to America and married. But even as I think it, I know it isn’t possible.
They’re all gone: Ainslie, Elke, Joseph, all the people I’ve loved who’ve loved me back in their own ways. Except for Rosalie, my sister, my albatross. And we will soon be gone too, bleached bones, grains of sand swept to sea as the tide goes out, carried by the Humboldt current to a cold country where everything is unfamiliar.
“Rosalie,” I call. “Rosalie, wake up! Rosie!”
Rosalie opens her eyes. “Are we there, Frances?”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Enchanted Islands Page 32