The Doctor and the Diva

by Adrienne McDonnell

  Beside him Ravell barked and swore and laughed, too. They slapped the backs of their necks and brushed their faces with handkerchiefs. They ripped off their boots and turned them upside down and shook them. They flung their boots at a boulder, then put the footwear back on again, both of them sprinting for the only thing that could save them now. They plunged in fast, the two of them, giving themselves up to the deepest part of the river.

  They dined that evening in their pajamas. Two strangers on horseback arrived at the Cocal just as they were sitting down—travelers coming from Manzanilla in the north, bound for Mayaro. The visitors were in search of water. After Ravell filled their flasks, he invited the men to join in their meal. That was the custom in these parts: you furnished strangers with anything they might need—a meal, a bed, the loan of a horse.

  One of the men, Smoot, was an experienced woodsman. Peter and Ravell planned to venture into the heart of the tropical forest the next day, and Smoot offered to come along.

  Erika was bored—and restless—from staying in the house, so she insisted that she wanted to explore the far reaches of the forest with them. Smoot, who agreed to serve as their guide, did not approve. They would not get far, he felt, if a lady came along.

  But Erika persisted. The next morning they outfitted her with a mushroom helmet and an old pair of Ravell’s trousers rolled up at the ankles. Munga brought a small coolie man’s boots and placed them at her feet.

  They moved through the tropical forest in deliberate order, with Smoot in the lead, armed with his gun. All of them had cutlasses. For mile after mile, they raised their blades and hacked through creepers and vines, crossing a tropical forest floor that never quite dried. Very quickly they sank in mud up to their calves. To everyone’s surprise, it was not Erika who slipped first. That honor went to Ravell, who keeled over laughing, legs sprawling, into a thick pit of muck.

  Why, Peter wondered, did Erika not feel the exhaustion? The woods exhilarated his wife—he could tell from the way she gazed upward, smiling at a scarlet ibis winging past. Her face shone as though rain had fallen, and her lips looked swollen in the heat. The men glanced at her, expecting her to wither or whine, but she trooped onward, seemingly tireless, less in need of periodic rests than they. Peter counted himself blessed to have the sort of wife who continued intrepidly.

  A waterfall of orchids spilled from the immense trees and blocked their path. Ah, the extravagance of nature! Peter wanted to shout. Smoot lifted his cutlass to make a great killing swipe. “Don’t cut that!” Erika cried in protest. But she spoke too late. One minute a curtain of stunning orchids stretched before them, but by the next, it was gone.

  For five miles they traveled by compass; they staggered and sliced their way. Thorns hung everywhere, some like needles, others curved like the tips of steel knives. At one point Smoot gave a yelp and ripped off his shoe. A sandbox tree thorn had pierced through Smoot’s leather sole and gone straight into his foot.

  The compass and guesswork led them to a swamp, but it was too late to turn back, so they lunged forward in water and mud that filled their boots.

  When at last they heard the sound of breakers not far off, Peter tore the helmet from his head, and the others did the same. When they reached the beach, Ravell opened coconuts for them to drink. Peter felt the sweetness flush through him as he swallowed. Smoot poured a coconut’s juice over his head.

  After Smoot tossed the empty husk aside, he gave a hoot and ran toward the Atlantic and threw himself in, clothes and all. The other men followed. Erika, too, walked straight into the surf. After a moment she shot upward from the waves, her hair streaming over her face.

  That evening they dined in their pajamas again. Erika came to the table in her peach silk dressing gown, her rinsed curls loose and damp.

  While they ate, Peter knew the men were watching his wife. They stared at her as she lowered her eyes, plucked an oyster from its shell, and slipped it onto her tongue with her fingers. Smoot marveled aloud at Erika’s stamina. Ravell’s eyes rested too long on her.

  Peter’s head filled with the fumes of his drink, and he was more pleased than anyone, because she was his, while the rest were half in love with her.

  I will do anything to keep her, he thought. Anything.

  27

  A groom arrived one day at dawn to drive Peter to Sangre Grande. From there he’d take a train to Port of Spain, where a steamer would carry him across to Venezuela and the Orinoco. In two weeks he would return, he said. After Peter’s departure, Erika lingered under pillows and sheets until late morning, afraid of herself, afraid of what might happen when she got up from the bed.

  Ravell had been long gone from the house, she knew. He went to sleep early, and began his work by four or five. Hard rains had resumed—drenching, tropical bursts that beat the roof hard.

  At midday she sat in the parlor writing letters to her father and her brother. By that hour Ravell had returned to the house and finished the late breakfast he always took at eleven in the morning. He entered the parlor dressed in a helmet and rubber rain gear, ready to go out again. He stepped toward her, his hands clasped respectfully behind his back.

  “Peter told me that you’re menstruating.”

  She nodded. She sealed her letter and moved to a rocking chair near the window that had been left open. The covered porch directly outside prevented any rain from soaking the sill, but the torrent could be clearly heard, the curtains stirred by intermittent breezes. It was pleasant to remain inside the house, protected from the downpour, and still feel the force of it.

  “In Boston, what would you be doing on a rainy afternoon like this?” he asked. “Listening to Caruso singing ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ on your Victrola? It’s a pity that we haven’t got the magic of electricity here at the Cocal.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “I worry that you’ll be bored here,” he said gently. “Perhaps in a few days—” He hesitated, knowing her feelings. “Maybe I’ll have my overseer, Gibbs, put you on a train, and you can visit Mrs. Hartley at the Eden estate.”

  Erika shook her head in refusal. She rocked in the oak chair, peered through the slit in the lace curtains at the rain, and asked, “Why did you decide to become a doctor?”

  He took a seat on the Turkish sofa and removed his helmet, turning it round and round in his hands. “Because my mother died when I was young.”

  She stopped rocking. When she had described losing her own mother, he had not mentioned this. “How did she die?”

  “My mother died of puerperal fever after the birth of her third son,” he said.

  “Did the baby survive?”

  “No,” he answered.

  She nodded solemnly. The breeze through the window—the welcome coolness usually brought by the rains here—only chilled her now. Under her white sleeves, her shoulders felt clammy. They listened to the driving rain for a moment, and then he asked if she had everything she needed, and if there was anything he or the servants might do for her.

  “Actually—” Erika rose from her chair. “I’ve discovered something very strange.” She led him to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Peter, where that morning, to her horror, she had opened a portmanteau and found that the clothes in the very center had become mildewed. Overnight, a pair of her boots had become covered with green mold. “Even clothes I hang up—” Opening the armoire, she showed him a white dress with filth growing on the cuffs.

  “It’s the extreme humidity,” Ravell explained hurriedly. “It’s a never-ending fight. We’ll have your things washed and bleached immediately.” He hurried down the corridor, the walls echoing like a tunnel as he shouted Munga’s name.

  That night Ravell retired to his quarters by nine o’clock as usual, but when she retreated to her own bed, Erika lay stiffly on the mattress, listening. The rains had stopped. High in the trees beyond the house, howler monkeys let out roars that left her shivering.

  She had forgotten her book in the parlor, and thinkin
g she might read herself to sleep, she took a lamp and went to get it. Returning through the hallway, she almost collided with a tall figure—the Negress who cooked their meals. They both froze, each startled to see the other. The black woman was nearly six feet in height, and she looked down at Erika. The cook’s great shoulders and statuesque presence gave the impression that she might have been carved from a giant balata tree. In her arms the servant carried a set of neatly ironed bed linens.

  Back in her room, neglecting all her usual precautions against bats, Erika extinguished the lamp for a moment. The red howlers had grown silent, but she kept listening. She heard the Negress open Ravell’s door to enter his bedroom. From the opposite side of the garden, the Negress’s voice could be heard, and a short laugh from Ravell. The curious sounds drew Erika to the window, where she parted the drapes for a peek.

  Within minutes, the Negress emerged from Ravell’s quarters, pulling the French doors shut behind her. She hurried through the courtyard, returning to the village where the workers lived. In her arms she carried soiled bedclothes, pillows, crumpled sheets.

  Erika wondered why Ravell had summoned for help at such a late hour, and why he’d wanted his bedding changed. Had he wanted to sweeten his sheets for a reason? Did he plan to sleep with her?

  A lamp still burned in Ravell’s quarters, his drapes still open. She saw him stride, fully dressed, into his room. He was alone.

  She wondered if the French doors to his room would soon open, if he would cross the courtyard and ask her to join him on his freshened bed. A river of brightness from the moon poured through the slit in her curtains and fell across the floor. She returned to her bed and hoped and waited, but Ravell did not come.

  Her period had finally ended, she told him.

  “Well, that’s cause for celebration,” he said. “The tide is low enough to use the beach as a road,” he pointed out. “Would you like to go for a buggy ride and visit the coconut oil factory near Mayaro?”

  The sun flared as they left the house, and she felt nervous. This was the first time she and Ravell had gone anywhere alone together. She wore a white shirtwaist that smelled of the jasmine soap his servants had used to wash it. She’d put on her walking skirt, with the hemline just above her ankles. Freed from the cumbersome linen napkins she’d been wearing, she stepped into the carriage and relished the air that played between her legs.

  When Ravell shook the reins, the buggy lurched forward, and he, too, appeared nervous. He glanced around the hard beach as though the terrain were unfamiliar to him.

  When they reached the Nariva River, they found that the ferryman—a person known as “Happy Jack”—had fallen asleep in the noonday sun. For a full ten minutes Ravell’s voice thundered and bellowed across the water, trying to awaken the man.

  Finally Happy Jack wobbled to his feet, laughing at himself, and soon waved them aboard with apologies.

  “He’s always like this,” Ravell told Erika. “Always happy. Always seeing the humor in things.”

  When they arrived at the coconut oil factory, Erika felt Ravell put his hand lightly against the small of her back as he guided her inside. His eyes met hers as they entered the building. His gaze did not waver. The intimacy of his stare felt almost unbearable and she looked away, relieved when the factory manager appeared. The man began to explain how his workers took copra, the dried kernel, and pressed oil from it. From a thousand nuts, twenty gallons of oil could be squeezed. Coolies poured it into their hands and rubbed its moisture into their skin. The oil could be used for cooking. When Erika dipped her finger in a vat and tasted, the flavor was rather pleasant.

  “Why do we use lard?” she said. “Such unappetizing stuff. Why not use this?”

  On the way home, Ravell asked if she cared to see a place where monkeys gathered—an encampment of sorts—so they stopped the buggy and he led her into the woods. With a cutlass he slashed a tunnel for her to follow him through. Palms and creepers and veils of orchids fell.

  When they reached the site, it was apparent that monkeys must have recently deserted the area, because they’d left half-eaten balata fruit strewn on the ground. Sunlight slit through the trees, but not a single Cebus monkey showed itself. While she and Ravell walked around, twigs crackled underfoot. He followed so close behind her that she sensed that at any moment, his hands might steer her hips.

  They did not speak about the monkeys’ absence. No word passed between them at all. He still did not touch her. Finally she spun around to face him, but he had lifted his eyes toward whatever creature was whipping through foliage at the tops of trees.

  She had her pride. Last time I embraced him, he pushed me away, she thought. I will not be the one who reaches for him first.

  They continued to meander around the site before Ravell said, “So you still plan to live in Italy one day.”

  She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  Ravell frowned, cast his eyes upward, and then looked down again, shaking his head. “It makes no sense, your wanting a baby. You should go to Italy now, while you’re free.”

  Erika’s hair had loosened, drifting to her shoulders. She paced around the clearing with fierce, strong steps.

  “You remind me of myself,” he said. “With these risks you plan on taking. The best and worst parts of myself.”

  “What I want is impossible, it seems,” Erika said. “But that won’t stop me. In the end, I’ll figure out a way.”

  As they started back, it began to rain. Every stem and petal they brushed felt thick with moisture, filling her with sudden thirst. She wanted to suck a little water from the leaves. Instead, she closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue and caught a few drops and swallowed them. Ravell smiled faintly. A blue and yellow macaw floated past, and Erika noticed two yellow-breasted toucans seated on branches. Sober as judges, the toucans surveyed the forest with their hard, stern bills.

  As the rain accelerated, she and Ravell quickened their pace. Nothing can happen between us now, she thought, not with the rain scattering everything. They passed a colony of green parrots that screeched so terribly, Erika put her hands over her ears for a moment. Rain soaked her white shirtwaist sleeves and pasted them to her arms and shoulders, her flesh showing through the thin fabric.

  The showers let up as they drew close to the shore. Ravell, who’d been leading, stopped under a ring of palm trees and turned to her. His dark hair had flattened, the wet strands separated and stuck to his forehead and nape. He’d halted completely, his chest moving hard for breath. Again, he looked openly at her.

  Then his mouth was upon hers, their tongues wet with each other’s, and they tasted rain. They kissed for so long that she drew back, finally. As they paused for air, she listened. The sounds seemed as intimate as everything about to come: the hiss of rain on leaves, the emission of liquid pouring through a tiny nearby stream, the teeming in the forest behind her, the violence of the Nariva River they’d crossed, the thunder, the lapping of waves.

  They found a place where the ground was sandy and their knees fell upon it. They could see white curling surf through the palms. When she lifted her skirts, she saw him falter and hesitate.

  “I’ve not come prepared,” he said.

  “I don’t become pregnant very easily.”

  “You did.”

  “Only once in eight years,” she said. “It would take you eight years of trying.”

  While her back twisted against the hard sand, she felt the life she’d known was over now. Their cheeks rubbed, damp against damp, his moustache against her ear. Drops fell from her jawbone. He licked the rain off her face. She heard sounds of suction as his clothes stuck to hers. His trousers had become glued to his thighs, and she watched him unpeel them from his body. His shirt, unbuttoned, fell open, and she saw that he was as taut and lean as a very young man. She traced his ribs, and she touched his chest hair, wet and dark as it curled around her fingers.

  As he entered her, blinks of sun emerged, and she shut her red eyelids against i
t. Soon she heard the surf splitting apart, and felt a pleasure so sharp that it flashed to the arches of her feet.

  When it was over, they lay sprawled on the beach, the sun drying them. Natives of Trinidad believed that it was supposed to bring quick death, to go from a tropical drenching to letting the sun bake the moisture from your clothes.

  Instead, everything felt blessed here, even the grit of sand in her hair, and the looseness of her bare feet, her heels falling in opposite directions, the breakers pushing a breeze against her soles.

  28

  A jaguar swam across the river.

  Peter had risen at daybreak, keen to watch everything. By night the small stern-wheeler had carried him across the Gulf of Paria and Serpent’s Mouth, and by dawn they entered the delta of Venezuela.

  The waterway through the tropical forest was narrow at first, and the air swirled with noises of animals he could not see, such as wild pigs. Troops of monkeys swung from creepers high in trees. He had never seen so many birds in one place. Cranes and herons poised on roots exposed in the water, along with kingfishers, and to his amazement, none of them stirred as the little steamer passed. As he gazed at them, they watched him. Occasionally a single, hungry bird dived into water and disappeared.

  But the jaguar was the sight that most gripped him. The animal was large and muscular, with every tendon stretched as he swam toward what he was after.

  If he had not persisted, Peter thought, if he had not gotten the ice and convinced Ravell and Erika that they should follow his plan, he would not be moving freely across this river, entering a continent where he had never been. He wanted to possess it all—every scarlet ibis he saw through his field glasses, every dolphin that splashed upriver, every experience.