by Pam Lewis
Minke could only stare at him. Expired? Did that mean what she thought it meant? She was incredulous.
“Of what cause?” Sander asked.
“What do you mean, expired?” Minke demanded.
The captain closed his eyes. “Miss Dietz has died.”
“No. You’re mistaken. She was getting better!” Minke cried. This couldn’t be happening.
“Consumption. That, combined with dehydration from her illness.”
“I just saw her, and she was better. Captain, are you sure?”
Captain Roemer, eyes closed, nodded.
“Consumption! And she wasn’t quarantined?” Sander shouted at the captain.
Minke watched, slack-jawed, as Sander railed at the captain about contamination, recklessness. She could think of nothing but her own role, her anger that day at Astrid for something that wasn’t Astrid’s fault and she knew it. She’d behaved miserably toward Astrid and all because she, Minke, had been selfish and disappointed and peevish to find out that Astrid would be living far away, and angry that Astrid had said those terrible things about Comodoro, things she didn’t want to repeat to Sander or even to Cassian. And now Astrid was dead.
“Did you hear me?” Sander’s face was in hers.
She shook her head.
“You’ll have Cassian take a look at you right away. Can’t have consumption. Can’t have it.”
TESSA CAME ALONE to their cabin that night. She was weeping, her hair uncombed. She begged Sander and Cassian to intervene on her behalf with Captain Roemer to keep Astrid’s body onboard until it could be buried properly in Argentina. Her husband had already tried and failed. “We’re only a few days away,” she wailed. But Sander refused, saying he would not undermine the captain’s authority on this matter. Customs at sea were inviolate.
“But she must at least be spared the desecration, Sander!”
Sander held his ground.
“Why not allow it?” Minke asked after Sander returned from escorting Tessa back to her cabin.
“The sea has its laws,” he said. “Without rigid adherence, chaos is inevitable.”
“What did she mean, desecrated?”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “The body must be sewn into a shroud made of sail canvas. The last stitch goes through the nose to make sure she is dead.”
Minke shuddered. “But she is dead! Cassian said so.”
“It’s custom. Tomorrow the body will be laid on a table from the crew’s mess and placed at the gangway opening to starboard, feet to the sea and shrouded in the Naval Jack. Scrap iron will be attached at the foot end to ensure that the body will sink.” He spoke completely without feeling, just a recitation of fact. “It’s the way it is.”
In the morning all engines ceased, and the silenced ship lazed over the swells, its sails drawn to half-mast to signify a death onboard. Minke clung to Sander’s arm as they made their way to the deck.
She found Pieps among the onlookers, his hair slicked neatly back, eyes downcast. The crew stood at attention in two perfect rows, one to either side of the table. Tessa wept and quivered in a chair, apparently without the strength to stand. Minke observed that the poor woman was unable to watch when Captain Roemer shouted out orders, and the crew removed their hats. Six men in uniform carried the body to the deck in its canvas shroud, laid it on the table, and covered it with the flag of the Netherlands.
Captain Roemer read from the Bible, but Minke barely heard the words. She couldn’t believe that the small shape lying on the table covered by the flag was Astrid. That Astrid had died before ever experiencing life. “We therefore commit her body to the deep. To be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who, at His coming, shall change our vile body, that it may be like His glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”
The six crew members stepped forward, slipped their hands under the table, raised it high, and tipped it toward the water. Astrid’s body slid out from underneath the flag. A moment later, there came a splash.
“Rust zacht, mijn vriend”—rest softly, my friend—Minke whispered.
Captain Roemer then led them in the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father,” Minke said, and raised her eyes. She’d never been able to keep her eyes shut during prayer. She murmured the rest of the prayer, thinking about Astrid’s soul, wondering how difficult it would be for a soul to escape the weight of such deep water. Maybe Tessa was wondering the same thing. The woman clung to the rail and watched the sea, her eyes fixed on the spot where Astrid had entered.
Someone was watching Minke. She could feel the eyes. She looked about the solemn gathered crowd. Everyone else’s head was bowed. But not Dietz’s. He stood separate from Tessa with his feet apart, the better to hold up his great weight, his arms crossed over his chest. He was not saying the prayer with everyone else. He was looking at Minke. When she caught his eye, he smiled slyly.
PART TWO
COMODORO RIVADAVIA, ARGENTINA
* * *
April 1912
6
IT WAS A fine morning—cool, with a good breeze. A flock of terns appeared, swooping and diving. Land was near. On deck people pushed and shoved all around her for railing space, but Minke held on tightly. She’d had that spot for an hour, and she wasn’t going to let it go.
Land appeared, so distant and vague it almost could have been a cloud before turning into an uneven rope-colored strip across the horizon.
She pulled her coat around her neck against the wind. Where was the town? Nothing stood out. Even as the water became shallower and turned a milky green, there seemed to be no life ahead.
The quiet onboard said that others were as perplexed as she. “There?” someone said tentatively. Yes, she detected movement along the waterfront and beyond that, a few buildings the color of the gray surrounds. Cassian pushed through for a space beside her.
Where were the beautiful houses made of stone, the waving grasses of the pampas? Where was the town center? Sander had called Enkhuizen just a fishing village, so anyone would expect something grander, but look at Comodoro! A bunch of hovels thrown onto miserable dry land. She made out teams of horses hitched to wagons at the shore, people in dark clothing moving about. Wind devils swirled.
“Where is everything?” she asked.
“Give it time, Minke,” Cassian said.
“But where will we live?”
“For the time being, in a hotel called the Nuevo Hotel de la Explotación del Petróleo.”
She was interested in the prospect of staying in a hotel, something she’d never done. “What does that mean?”
“It’s the hotel for the drilling of oil.”
A valley of disappointment followed every small rise in her spirits. She leaned over the rail to look into the water. “At least I can swim in the sea. It looks delicious. As soon as it’s warm enough, I’m going right in.”
“It’s almost winter.”
“Oh, Cassian,” she said. “It’s April.”
“Oh, Minke,” he said.
She turned to see that forever smile on his lips, as if the world were constantly amusing. “Now what?”
“It’s all opposite here. Summer is winter, winter is summer. It’s hot in the north and cold in the south.” He made a little circling motion with his hand. “Water swirls counterclockwise in the basin.”
SHE TOOK ONE of the first tenders from the ship to the shore, along with Cassian, Father Bahlow, the Dietzes, and four men she didn’t know. Sander stayed behind, seeing to his cargo. She sat beside Tessa Dietz, put an arm around her, and held the woman’s coat to her face to stave off the wind. Tessa rocked miserably, her head down, moaning in grief.
At the shore, a wide plank was thrown down for them to cross. Cassian helped her with Tessa, who was barely able to stand. Men milled about in heavy woolen coats and hats. Minke fel
t their curious eyes on her and Tessa as they labored across the sand to a stone wall that gave some protection against the wind.
Boat after boat arrived onshore of first-class and then steerage passengers, the latter joining in the effort to pull the huge boxes and sacks of supplies up the beach on rollers made of logs, load them onto wagons, and slap the horses to get going. More wagons, more boats. Father Bahlow trudged across the sand, looking beleaguered, his three nuns following. Minke worried about Tessa, who sat in dumb silence. How would she manage in this place without Astrid? To keep from imagining Astrid deep in her black watery grave, Minke forced herself to watch the unloading.
She was surprised to see Sander’s yellow car come ashore, roped to a platform tugged behind one of the boats. Somehow it was a godsend in this strange place, an antidote to Tessa’s misery and a welcome memory of that first day with Sander when she drove his car out of the ditch. She jumped up to see it, to touch it.
Meneer Dietz was in conversation with Sander, who had come to shore with the car. Dietz wanted to borrow it for the journey to his estancia, and Sander took pity and gave in. Minke watched with two minds as the Spijker was pushed up the beach, the contents of its trunk removed, and then pushed the rest of the way to the top of the retaining wall. Tessa squeezed into the passenger seat, and Meneer took the wheel like cock of the walk, as if the car belonged to him. Petty, oh my, how could she be so petty when those two people had just suffered so? But she couldn’t help it. Dietz was grandstanding. He wanted to be seen in the countryside with Sander’s grand car so people would think it belonged to him. That was the sort of man he was.
She ran up the dusty path to watch along with some children from the town. The car left a rooster tail of dust, swerved, and stalled in a ditch, its wheels spinning in the sand. Meneer Dietz stormed back down the road on foot. He spoke in agitation to Sander, pointing down the road to where the car lay immobilized. Then he and Sander climbed into one of the waiting carriages, ordered the driver to take them to the car, and pulled Tessa out. Once Tessa was loaded onto the carriage, it continued on, leaving Sander and some of the bigger children to push the car out of its rut. Minke wanted so much to help. “Let me drive it back? Oh, please, Sander,” she said. “Please, please.”
He squeezed the bridge of his nose, a gesture that she understood meant he was feeling overwhelmed. “Fine.” He turned and walked quickly back toward the unloading.
She had a few children around her now, and she showed the biggest boy how to crank the front while she engaged the pedals. It took several tries. Each time she moved the two pedals past each other the way she’d done in getting the car from the ditch that day, the gears ground loudly and refused to engage. Just as she was about to despair, the pedals slid smoothly past each other and the car inched forward. Ahead of her, the Dietzes’ carriage was rocking its way over the barren land. There were no roads to speak of, just the marks of wooden wheels heading this way and that. Minke did not know how to turn the car around as Sander did, using the reverse gear. She could only go forward, and so she did, the children yelping and racing behind her. She lost them when she stepped on the gas, the better to make a wide arc around the Dietzes. She waved as she passed, but Tessa and Frederik did not respond. She was thrilled with herself, with how skillfully she drove the car and sailed across the dusty land back toward the Frisia, where she applied the brake too hard. The car shuddered to a stop, making that awful noise again because she’d forgotten about the clutch. Sander was nowhere to be seen, a relief. When he was preoccupied, a small error like that could irritate him.
SHE AND SANDER were among the last to leave the beach. Sander had to check on all his freight. He ticked off each crate on a list as it was moved from the tenders to the wagons. Minke hadn’t wanted to go alone to the hotel, or even accompanied by Cassian, so she’d waited under the protection of the retaining wall. The truth was that she dreaded seeing the town close up. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had passed the edge of the known world and was about to drop off altogether.
Pieps was helping with the unloading, and she watched him. He was cheerful, always with a smile and a quick joke for the other men as they heaved the heavy sacks, trunks, and furniture up the beach. She wondered how he had the wherewithal to be so happy.
She wasn’t aware he’d seen her until he came over and asked if he might sit beside her for a few minutes and catch his breath. Up close, she saw his pale skin was dappled from exertion, his fine blond hair pasted to his forehead with sweat. His smile was enormous. “So here we are!” he said. He gestured around. “The gem of the ocean. Comodoro Rivadavia.”
“Gem indeed,” she said. “I don’t know. It looks a little primitive.”
“It is primitive,” he said. “But not for long.”
He reminded her of the boys in school who talked lightning-fast and found everything funny and never waited for her to speak before barging ahead into some new topic. He pointed to a man struggling to carry a heavy bucket up the beach. “The fire department,” he said. He did an imitation of Captain Roemer, tucking his chin and fixing her with crossed eyes, making her howl with laughter. “Oh, and that one.” He was pointing right at Sander, who was gesturing to someone about the loading of a cart. “The gens d’armes.”
She should stop him.
“He prowled through cargo day and night, checking the locks on storage, counting things. He didn’t trust a one of us. Said he’d know right away if anything was tampered with and there’d be hell to pay, although he wasn’t above joining in a game from time to time.” He jumped to his feet and produced an exaggerated version of Sander’s stride, one hand behind, palm out. It was Sander.
“That’s my husband!” she said, wiping her eyes.
Pieps had the type of fair skin that became very red when he was embarrassed. It made her laugh a little more. The poor boy looked absolutely stricken. “I thought you were traveling with your sister and your parents,” he said. “The girl who died.”
“Astrid. No, she was my friend.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment, then he cleared his throat and apologized. She accepted his extended hand; as she did, she noticed Sander watching them and cast her eyes down, wondering with a stab of guilt if he’d recognized himself in the imitation Pieps had done or, worse, seen the way she had laughed.
IT WAS LATE afternoon when she and Sander walked together to the Hotel de la Explotación del Petroleo, a solitary one-story structure on the mushroom-colored earth. It was flimsy-looking and made of rippled corrugated metal, even the roof. Bits of paper fluttered along its sides, shoved into the seams, apparently notices that would be of interest to the people of Comodoro.
The door opened onto a bar smelling deliciously of roasting meat. A big silver espresso machine hissed in one corner. Small square tables filled the room, each with bottles of brandy and wine already laid out. And men. Always men. Men everywhere—sitting, talking, watching.
Sander ushered her through a cramped foyer, where birds in cages made a racket, drowned out only by the rattling of wind against metal outside. Their room was no bigger than her kitchen at home, filled with a sagging bed and a single bureau.
Sander took off his boots, put them outside the door, and fell heavily onto the bed. “Come, my little minx,” he said, pulling her on top of him, causing the bed to groan and sag. “My bum just touched the floor,” he said, and they laughed. He bounced until they were giddy. “We will begin our life properly in Comodoro Rivadavia, by fucking!”
“Sander!”
A smile played at his lips. “What?” he whispered.
The forbidden word rinsed through her like liquid fire. It exhilarated her. She threw her head back and laughed; there was no one to scold her for hearing such a word, no one even to know. The word belonged to them, here in the privacy of this peculiar hotel on this barren strip of land. She slipped out of her clothes and onto the bed, loving the protective, healing warmth of his skin. They made love,
rocking, hitting the floor in their fury while the wind picked up strength and black night fell.
COMODORO RIVADAVIA—VAST, colorless, and like nothing Minke had imagined. Instead of the lush green of Holland, it was a brown monotone. A single hill called the Cerro Chenque rose to the east, smooth as an upside-down funnel.
Although Sander hadn’t been to Comodoro, only to Buenos Aires, a thousand miles away, he seemed to take the primitive conditions in stride, and Minke knew better than to complain. He immediately set about building a house for them. For the time being, it would be like all the other houses—corrugated metal sides nailed to a wooden skeleton, a hard-packed dirt floor, and the roof weighed down with slabs of concrete and lengths of lumber to keep it from blowing away in a high wind—but once his business was established, he would build them a fine house of wood and stone.
He hired some local men and chose a spot near the center of town, and while he worked, she walked the dusty surrounds in her black wedding dress. Everyone was dressed in dark colors, and she didn’t want to stand out. Nor did she want to dirty her lovely new dresses. She clopped along in wooden shoes because of the mud and dirt, seeing rabbits and mice, an armadillo and sparrows. In the distance far to the west, the hills, or maybe they were mountains—she had no experience with either—were gray in some light and the softest brown in others. A few worn paths led here and there, but mostly the wagons and the animals crisscrossed the land every which way, since nothing was there to stop them. No trees, no rivers or rocks. What grew in Comodoro was a thorny plant that broke off and tumbled across the plains.
On a day when the air was fine and crisp, the sky cloudless, she found her way up Cerro Chenque by means of a well-worn path. From that vantage point, she could look down on all of Comodoro, with its little cluster of buildings at the center. The Explotación, and a store called the Almacén, which smelled of polish and whose owner, Señor Bertinat, followed her about like a pet dog, suggesting she buy this or that. She worried that the Almacén was competition for the store they would build. It provided for all needs—soap and food and clothing, tools and equipment. What else could Sander provide? But she pushed those thoughts down. Sander, after all, was a man of experience, and she knew nothing of the world. Better to trust him.