Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  They changed trains in Chicago in the middle of the night. Indigo awoke as Edward carried her off the train, wrapped in a blanket in her nightgown. She was embarrassed to be close enough to smell Edward—not just the soap he washed with but his odor. He held her lightly as if he were afraid she would break; women carried her differently. She pretended to be asleep and kept her eyes shut tight as they moved along the crowded platforms until they found the train and their car.

  Hattie and Indigo spent much of the remainder of the trip in the observation car with the garden books open in their laps as they gazed out the train windows for glimpses of gardens and parks that resembled those illustrated in the books. The closer they came to their destination, the more Hattie’s spirits and the spirits of the child soared.

  Edward was relieved to have the parlor compartment to himself the better part of the day as he completed the statement his attorney requested concerning the circumstances of the failed expedition on the Pará River. He consulted his journal for the details from the beginning.

  This morning the winds on the great river were high and against us; we were obliged to keep in port a great part of the day, which I employed in little excursions round our encampment. The live oaks are of astonishing magnitude, and one tree contains a prodigious quantity of timber, yet comparatively, they are not tall, even in these forests, where, growing on firm ground, in company with others of great altitude (such as Fagus sylvatica, Liquidambar, Magnolia grandiflora, and the high Palm tree), they strive while young to be on an equality with their neighbors.

  The journal entries made no mention of the clandestine itinerary of the expedition; indeed, his attorney advised him to maintain his ignorance of Vicks’s mission on the Pará River. All final preparations for the expedition had been made by Lowe & Company when Edward received a telegram from Lowe & Company with news of the last-minute changes that were necessary.

  Originally the plan called for Edward to travel alone; Lowe & Company was keen on modest overhead with high returns to their investors. Business was conducted discreetly; buyers or their agents made their requests, and Lowe & Company contracted with independent plant hunters like himself to go into the field to obtain the specimens. This time, however, the consortium of prospective buyers insisted their representative, Mr. Eliot, go along.

  During his student years Edward financed his tours to distant and exotic locations by the resale of rare plants and other curiosities he found in public markets. From a trip to Honduras he brought home a lovely Oncidium sphacelatum for his mother’s collection. How delighted she had been as the plant was unpacked and settled in its hanging basket of bark and moss. It was a robust plant with light green leaves; the flower spike that later emerged was nearly three feet long and well branched; the flowers opened in quick succession and lasted for weeks.

  His mother had been so excited the morning the first buds opened, she called him to the glass house to see her “dancing ladies” in their yellow ball gowns, bright red vests, and elaborate tiaras of chocolate brown and butter yellow. The orchid thrived and became a special favorite of his mother.

  From that time on, when he collected wild orchids for his mother’s collection, he brought back a few extra plants to sell to collectors of her acquaintance. His first sale to other collectors had been specimens of Brassavola nodosa he brought back from Guatemala. The orchid was always a favorite because of the heavenly fragrance of its odd white flowers resembling wild swans in flight. His mother lost her specimen to overwatering. Sadly, the loss of this orchid was followed by others as his mother compulsively watered the orchids in the days that followed his father’s funeral.

  Mr. Albert of Lowe & Company assured him the company had complete confidence in him as a field collector of wild orchids; however, due to the substantial sums at stake, the investors had requested their man come along. Edward assumed the man would be one of the hybridizers who wished to go see for himself the natural habitat of the orchids. Although Edward preferred to travel alone, he had no objection to traveling companions. The list of orchid specimens wanted was quite extensive, and Edward could use the assistance.

  When he first traveled the jungle rivers twenty years before, a splendid profusion of wild orchid flowers could be seen along the riverbanks, and specimens were easily gathered. But the orchid mania swept in, and though it ebbed, it did not subside; over the years the demand for wild orchids used by hybridizers made the plants increasingly scarce and difficult to obtain.

  Ordinarily, Edward made his own travel arrangements at his own expense; he went alone to enjoy the exotic beauties and curiosities in the solitude of the forests and mountains. He brought along a list of plant material desired by his private clients, wealthy collectors in the east and in Europe. The sales of the specimens he collected ensured that he did not deplete his capital. But during 1893, shocking setbacks had occurred for many investors, and Edward suffered significant losses on the stock market. The remote destination and the magnitude of the specimens sought on the Pará River required far more of a cash outlay than he could afford; so Lowe & Company agreed to advance a large sum to outfit the expedition.

  Edward was to receive a generous honorarium, and it was understood he might collect as many specimens for himself as he wished, but he was in no position to object to additional members of the expedition. Mr. Eliot might be helpful with the labeling and packing of the specimens.

  The other addition to the Pará River expedition was far more unsettling; Mr. Vicks was an Englishman who came by special request of the Department of Agriculture in cooperation with officials at the Kew Gardens. Mr. Albert swore Edward to secrecy because Mr. Vicks was on a special mission for Her Majesty’s government and time was of the essence. A virus, rubber tree leaf blight, was destroying Britain’s great Far Eastern rubber plantations. Mr. Vicks’s mission was to obtain disease-resistant specimens of rubber tree seedlings from their original source, the lowland drainages of the Pará River. It was imperative Kew Gardens obtain specimens that resisted and survived the leaf blight so stricken plantations in the Far East might be replanted with resistant trees. Otherwise the supplies of cheap natural rubber would be lost to England and the United States; Brazil would enjoy a world monopoly of rubber once more.

  The problem was, all British horticulturists were denied entry visas to Brazil because twenty-five years earlier, diplomatic feathers had been ruffled when Henry Wickham smuggled seventy thousand rubber tree seeds past Brazilian customs officers to break Brazil’s monopoly of natural rubber. Only three thousand seedlings were obtained from the seeds by the Kew Gardens, but they were enough to open up vast rubber plantations in Malaya and Ceylon.

  Before Wickham’s daring feat, Brazil and her Portuguese godfathers had jealously guarded their rubber monopoly. Twice before Wickham, agents sent out by Kew Gardens were arrested by the Brazilian authorities in possession of hundreds of Hevea brasiliensis seedlings. Clever Wickham chartered a riverboat and smuggled the seeds hidden in Indian baskets; for his daring, Wickham was knighted by the queen.

  Since that time, any foreigner found in possession of rubber tree seeds or seedlings was arrested immediately. Thus, as an extra precaution, Vicks traveled under a U.S. passport specially prepared for the mission. The Brazilians and Portuguese would be delighted if the British rubber plantations all were destroyed. The leaf blight virus might well restore Brazil’s world monopoly on natural rubber.

  Mr. Albert assured Edward Mr. Vicks would be no bother; researchers in Surinam learned deserted rubber plantations were the best sources of disease-resistant specimens. While Edward and Mr. Eliot went out to collect orchid specimens, Vicks would travel by canoe to abandoned rubber stations upriver.

  The Pará estuaries teemed with unimaginably diverse animal and plant life; monkeys, colorful parrots, and cascades of rare orchid flowers were not all; the Pará River was the only habitat of the Hevea brasiliensis, the most important source of natural rubber in the world.

  Hevea brasilie
nsis, the Caoutchouc Tree, the Pará Rubber Tree, sixty to one hundred thirty feet tall in native sites, floodplains in the watersheds of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. Leaflets elliptic, two to twenty-four inches long, thick and leathery. Seeds used as food by natives; the milky juice is the best and most important source of natural rubber.

  Edward read over his notes with a growing sense of regret; he felt uneasy about additional companions so near the departure, but he trusted the judgment of Mr. Albert and the company, so Edward did not object.

  He had more misgivings after his two companions were introduced: Eliot was a large sullen man who might be mistaken for a prizefighter were it not for the finely tailored white linen suit he wore. Vicks was small and dapper, but his eyes did not meet Edward’s when they were introduced. Mr. Albert produced the list of the rare orchids they were to collect, and Edward realized Mr. Eliot knew little or nothing about orchids. Eliot interrupted Edward’s descriptions of the orchids’ habitats to ask frivolous questions about the wet seasons and the dry seasons. The first time Eliot behaved rudely, Edward looked at Mr. Albert, who returned his gaze; after the second interruption Mr. Albert looked down at the list of orchids, cleared his throat, but said nothing.

  Mr. Eliot and Mr. Vicks shut themselves in their cabins before the steamship sailed, and Edward did not see them again until St. Augustine, where Mr. Eliot emerged reeking of rum and accompanied the first mate downtown. Mr. Vicks continued to take his meals alone in his cabin. The weather and currents were favorable and the steamship reached Port-of-Spain in near-record time. Edward’s misgivings about his companions gradually waned as he savored the beauty of the lush islands of emerald green in a sea of topaz. He stood at the ship’s stern for hours on end, damp with ocean mist, to look down at the subtle shifts of color in the transparent water until he saw an unfamiliar hue. He collected the seawater in a bucket tied to a long rope, then examined the water for rare algae or mosses under the microscope. He was so contented with his algae and mosses he gave little or no thought to Eliot and Vicks. They scarcely acknowledged one another if they happened to meet on the deck. Edward relaxed; it was as if he were traveling alone.

  The weather and currents were favorable and the steamship reached Pará on schedule. Their luggage was transferred to a mule-drawn cart that rattled down the planks of the dock to the small river steamer hired for the expedition up the Pará River. The boat captain was a gregarious Frenchman who insisted his distinguished passengers join him in a toast to the success of their journey, which was followed by another toast for favorable weather. The cabin boy refilled their glasses a third time and the captain made a toast to the saints to protect them from savage beasts and Indians. Edward was more worried about the boat’s three crewmen, blackened with coal dust, who skulked up from the boiler room to gawk at their passengers before they disappeared below.

  Once the riverboat was under way, Edward began to unpack and assemble his traveling laboratory. The boat was to serve as their headquarters while they made excursions on foot and by canoe into the jungle. The rainy season was past and the air was warm and relatively dry—just the conditions that favored the flowering of wild orchids. As the river narrowed Edward spent hours in a deck chair, where he was able to scan the banks with the aid of his binoculars.

  Orchids were rare in the dense forests of the lowlands, except in treetops and precipitous rocks above deep ravines and rivers. Few orchids liked deep shade—those few were those with green or white flowers; the colorful orchids came from sunnier, more open terrain. Edward scanned the list of orchids wanted by the consortium of hybridizers and noted which were winter blooming and must be collected now; the others, which bloomed in the spring and summer, could be collected last. These latter genera were the Laelia and Cattleya much sought by hybridizers, who wanted the rich colors of the Laelia flower but with the robust size and graceful shape of the Cattleya flower.

  The Laelia crispa had large fragrant white flowers with yellow-and-purple lips on a rather long stem. The hybridizers were interested in making a fragrant Cattleya, so the list included a number of specimens unproven in hybridization but wanted for the fragrance they might contribute to the hybrid that growers dreamed of. Edward was most concerned about this specimen because it did not bloom until summer, uncomfortably near the end of their time on the Pará.

  The Laelia purpurata circled on the list was sought by the hybridizers for its huge, eight-inch flowers of white suffused with rose, and rich velvety purple on its bell-shaped lip. The purpurata bloomed in the spring and Edward was confident he could obtain enough specimens before their departure. Also at the top of the list was Laelia cinnabarina; though not large, this orchid was prized by hybridizers for its bright rich red-orange blossoms shaped like stars. Scarce because it was much sought after by collectors and hybridizers, the cinnabarina bloomed from spring to late autumn, which made the plant somewhat easier to locate.

  Edward was surprised to see Cattleya labiata near the top of the list because only a few years before, a great many C. labiata had been found and were purchased by two different investment companies, one Belgian, the other British. A dispute arose over which company had the true C. labiata, and when word came from scientists that all the specimens were true Cattleya labiata, the price of an individual plant fell from $20 to $1 and a number of private investors were ruined.

  The Indians and their canoes were waiting on the riverbank when the steamer chugged into the village of Portal. The Indians were familiar with the orchid trade, and two men carried a moss-covered limb with a fine specimen of Oncidium papilio, with a long flower spike of bright orange-and-yellow flowers the shape of big butterflies, the so-called butterfly orchid that set off orchid mania years before. The papilio did not grow indoors, so there was a steady demand for replacements of those that died of overwatering and the cold.

  Now, the Indians knew the value of wild orchids, but frequently white brokers came upriver and demanded their entire stock of a species to corner the market. Indians who did not cooperate were flogged or tortured, much as they were at the Brazilian and Colombian rubber stations. These Indians worked for the French boat captain, who protected them from the violence of the brokers and agents; in return they sold him all of the best plants they found. Edward purchased the papilio from the Indians at the price set by the Frenchman—too expensive, really, but it was such a big, mature plant that Edward paid. The Frenchman offered to send his Indians out to gather every specimen on the list, but both Edward and Mr. Eliot declined.

  Before dark, Edward followed the muddy track from the river into the old village of Portal, which was a rubber station in the early days of the rubber trade. Years ago the old village was burned during a dispute between rival rubber companies. The new business district of Portal sprang up along the riverbank and consisted of some ramshackle boats and rotting barges tied to big logs. Apparently the Frenchman owned these boats and barges as well and rented space to the merchants and traders for their establishments. Miners and plantation foremen from hundreds of miles around depended on Portal for food and supplies, delivered to distant outposts upriver by the Frenchman’s riverboats, the Louis XIII, the Louis XIV, and the Louis XV.

  Portal had a violent history from its beginning as a rubber station where an Indian village once stood. All of those Indians were gone; the rubber station at Portal was infamous for the use of torture and killing to increase the output of the indentured Indians who gathered the wild rubber. Rivalry between the rubber buyers erupted into periodic raids and reprisal raids in which dozens of Indians and white and Negro overseers were killed. The Frenchman said the old town and rubber station had been burned to the ground twice before by rivals; the third time Portal burned, the rubber buyer retreated farther upriver. That was when the Frenchman got the idea for a new town, a floating town that could be moved up or down the river in times of danger or floated away to serve the rubber stations in other remote river locations.

  The Indians who met the boat did
not live here; they lived deep in the forest and were not as friendly as the Indians who once lived at Portal. Edward noticed even the structures not destroyed by fire appeared uninhabited; tree ferns and palms pushed up through roof joists. Inside the abandoned warehouses he passed, he heard noises of jungle creatures that crawled and roosted in the ruins. No wonder the old village site was thought to be haunted; Edward felt uneasy himself, as if someone or something were watching him. The brief twilight of the tropics began to give way to darkness and Edward felt a growing panic that sent him walking faster and faster until he was running for the riverbank.

  The motley barges and boats of the floating town were brightly lit with lanterns hung from their decks and rigging to announce the cantina and dance hall, the grocery and dry goods stores were all open for business. The relative coolness of the night brought out mine and plantation foremen from miles away.

  The bartender nodded at two young women, a Negro and a mulatto sitting nearby, but Edward quickly shook his head. A crudely lettered sign propped up by rum bottles announced that women were sold by the dance or by the night. The cantina boat and the dance hall barge were connected by a wide plank of wood; Edward bought a gin and sat at a table with a view of the dimly lit dance hall. Three couples moved sluggishly to the music of a large hurdy-gurdy cranked by a monkey chained to the leg of a table. The monkey turned the crank as long as the dancers refilled its tin dish with bits of dry bread, purchased from the bartender. When the tin dish was empty, the monkey let go of the crank and leaned against the hurdy-gurdy box to rest. Edward watched as the little creature’s fingers delicately rubbed its neck under the leather collar. One after the other, the dancing couples disappeared across the plank to the hotel barge. The monkey watched the dancers disappear, then looked hopefully in the direction of the cantina and Edward. Before he left, Edward bought a handful of dry bread from the bartender for the monkey’s dish; the monkey looked at him anxiously and for an instant their eyes met before Edward turned away.