by Pam Lewis
“You’re making fun of me,” she said.
“A little,” Pieps said.
“You can tell him my husband is a merchant.”
Pieps translated, and Goyo’s eyes narrowed with interest. “¿Qué?”
“What does he have?” Pieps asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but we can go there together.” She would bring Sander a gaucho, and he would be proud of her. They left the hotel and headed to the store, and she wished the people of Enkhuizen could see her now in her red dress, side by side with a gaucho.
Outside, the town had a holiday feel. Everything was transformed, amplified. The gauchos rode wonderful horses, all of them the same gray with silvery rumps, their reins, bridles, and saddles sparkling with silver and turquoise. They raced one another down the main street, putting on a show. The ones on foot moved elegantly, in the same slow gait as Goyo, graceful for all their bulk and bowed legs.
She spotted Sander’s yellow car, crowded about with people. “There he is. Sander!” she called, aware of the spectacle she made in her red dress walking with Pieps and Goyo. “I’ve brought you Señor Goyo. He wants to trade with you,” she said.
“Goyo Mendez,” Goyo said.
Sander slipped an arm around Minke’s waist and pulled her to him tightly. He looked Goyo over and took in Pieps with an expression that told Minke he didn’t recognize the boy as the one he’d seen talking to her that first day.
“I can translate if you like,” Pieps said.
Goyo ran his hand over the shiny metal of the car.
“He wants to buy merchandise from you,” Minke said.
Sander squeezed her waist again. “Come in,” he said to the men.
Inside, he had opened the sacks and crates and arranged things artfully about. Minke ran from item to item. It was all so exciting. “I remember this!” she said, picking up an ornate silver vase. “It was in the dining room in Amsterdam. And this!” She held out a brass lamp. “It’s all from the house, isn’t it?”
Sander pinched the bridge of his nose, a signal that she was doing something wrong, that right now she should keep quiet and behave like a lady. But it was from the house. “I was only making an observation,” she said, feeling unjustly scolded.
Goyo ran his hands along the items without a change in expression, stopping at a case filled with textiles. The bargaining began immediately, with Pieps translating. When the numbers started to fly, Pieps couldn’t keep up, so Sander and Goyo bartered by making numbers on the dirt floor with a stick, scuffing them out with their shoes and ultimately coming to some sort of agreement, whereupon they shook hands. It had all happened quickly. Minke flushed with the pleasure of having brought them together, of having been useful to her husband after all.
“I need to see what he has in trade before this is concluded,” Sander said to Minke. “So it’s best you return to the hotel.”
“Oh, no, I’ll come, too.”
Sander frowned. “A word in private, Minke,” he said. They went outside. “Don’t contradict me in front of others.”
“I didn’t contradict you.”
“You’re doing it now. The trading station is no place for a woman.”
“Neither is the hotel,” she said.
“You’re going back to the hotel.” He called inside the store. “You, Pieps, is it? Escort my wife safely to the hotel.”
“I don’t need an escort.” She threw off Sander’s hand.
“See her back,” he said to Pieps.
With her head down, arms tight across her chest, and fighting back tears, she headed toward the hotel. She never knew from one minute to the next how Sander would behave. She stopped and stamped her foot at the injustice of it.
“What is it?” Pieps asked.
She’d forgotten about him. “Nothing,” she said. The thought of staying in the room all day took the air out of her. And that was something else. Their room. It was her haven, her sanctuary with Sander. No matter what else happened during the day, she could always count on feeling safe and free in the room with him. But the night before, something peculiar had happened. After they got back from their walk, Sander had told her to move around the room naked. Not such a strange thing—she often walked naked in the room and thought nothing of it—but he was taking swallows from a bottle of whiskey, smoking his cigar, and signaling to her to walk this way and that, to turn around, to pick something up off the floor. She’d refused. She hadn’t liked the game at all and had told him so, had told him it made her feel like a whore. He’d said, “Whore or Madonna?” something she hadn’t understood at all. She put an end to the whole charade by slipping on her dressing gown and tying the sash tightly. “I guess you’ve chosen,” he’d said, and she’d let it go, combing out her hair in front of the mirror.
“Do you know who Dr. Tredegar is?” she asked Pieps.
“I know who everybody is.”
“I want to go to his house and not the hotel.”
“Your husband gave instructions.”
She made a face. “I’ll go alone, then.”
“I promised to escort you to the hotel.”
“Then you can drop me at the hotel and fulfill your duty to my husband, and I’ll go alone to Cassian’s, and nobody can stop me.”
“You shouldn’t run about alone, Mevrouw. It’s not safe.”
“Call me Minke. And I run about alone all the time.”
He sighed deeply and shook his head. “You have to be careful.”
“I’m going to see Cassian. What you do is up to you.”
They set off around the Cerro toward Cassian’s, neither of them speaking. When they rounded the bend, she saw two horses tied to Cassian’s rail. Closer, she saw they were better horses than the sorry old things that had hauled all those goods across the pampas, although not nearly so fine as the gauchos’ horses she’d seen that morning in the street. She ran her hand over their soft, warm noses.
Cassian pulled open the door, and who was with him but Meneer Dietz! It had been months since she’d seen him. The man’s face was brightly sunburned, and that plus his scowl made him more repulsive.
“Come in, come in,” Cassian said to Minke.
She expected to see Tessa inside. She actually hoped to see Tessa in spite of the fact that she hadn’t liked the woman much. But the very prospect of talking to a woman, any woman, and in her own language brought sweet relief. She fumbled through the introduction of Pieps to the two men, looking around for Tessa. “Is Mevrouw Dietz here?”
Dietz shook his head. “She won’t travel. She’s hoping you might see fit to visit her.”
“Yes!” Minke said without a second thought. “Of course I will.”
“I brought her horse for you to ride. It has a lady’s saddle.”
“You mean now?”
Dietz threw open his hands. “Now, tomorrow. I don’t care. I’ll be in town for some time. You go at your convenience.”
“Then today,” Minke said.
Cassian laughed. “Not so quickly, Minke. It’s a long ride, eh, Dietz?”
“Several hours.”
Cassian turned to Minke. “If night falls before you arrive, you won’t have an easy time finding the estancia in the dark.” He paused. “Do you know how to ride, Minke?”
“No.”
“I do,” Pieps said.
“Go along, then, the two of you. Teach her to ride,” Dietz said, making a flicking motion with his fingers. “If she learns quickly, you can go tomorrow.”
“You’ll need to ask Sander,” Cassian said.
“I can learn to ride without asking Sander.” Minke clearly needed to learn to ride in Comodoro. “Besides, Sander is busy.” She ran outside to see the horses again. They snuffled in the dirt, looking for something to eat. “Which is mine?”
Dietz and Pieps saddled the horses. Dietz gave her a leg up, and she found herself suddenly up high on this large animal and having to slip her right knee over the pommel on the side, arrange the folds of h
er red dress, and clutch the reins, all while the horse danced backward.
“Relax the reins,” Pieps said, and as if by magic, the horse stopped. “Gentle,” he went on. “The animal should be under your control. Not a step taken that you don’t wish him to take. But command with kindness.”
They set off at a walk. Back around the Cerro and then, instead of going into the town, they headed away, out to the plains toward the gaucho camp. The saddle, although comfortable once she was aloft, was unlike any she had ever seen. Instead of sitting astride, as people did in the Netherlands, she sat with both her legs to the left, as if climbing sideways up a ladder. Once or twice the horse broke into a trot, and she bounced along, hanging on to the pommel for dear life. If she moved in opposition to the horse’s gait, the ride became smooth. It took a long time to get it right, but she was determined, and Pieps told her she was a natural. Up down, up down.
“Can we see the gaucho camp?” she asked Pieps.
He took off at a canter, and she followed to the camp. Several fires still burned, and animal bones littered the area around them. At home such fires would never be allowed to go unattended, but here there was only dirt and gravel, nothing to catch fire. Most of the gauchos had gone to town, but a few remained, sitting around one of the fires, eating meat from a spit. One spoke with Pieps in Spanish, and then a broad smile swept across his face. He lifted his hat to Minke. They wore odd hats, she thought, with the brim sharply up in front and down in back. The shoes were even more bizarre, made from the hide of a horse’s back legs, with the bends serving as heels and leaving the toes bare where the hoof had been removed. She said, “Buenos días.”
A figure approached fast on horseback—Goyo in a blur of dust, grinning widely with those big white teeth. He spoke to Pieps, and she recognized the words “señor” and “señora.” “Your husband would like us to come back,” Pieps said.
Minke said adios, and the three rode back to the Explotación, where Goyo hobbled their horses. Inside, the bar was even fuller than it had been in the morning, smokier, more animated. The men were drinking liquor and playing cards. Sander was at the same table in back where Minke had eaten breakfast. She slipped in beside him and grasped his hand under the table, excited to tell him of her adventure.
“I looked for you in the room. You weren’t there. That gaucho saw you out running a horse.” Sander withdrew his hand.
She indicated the bar, the noise. “I feel too strange in this hotel, with so many new people. I went to Cassian’s instead. You’ve always told me to seek Cassian out when I needed something.”
“But you were not at Cassian’s. You were out running horses. What’s gotten into you?”
Then she remembered. But of course! Sander didn’t know about Dietz being there with the horses or that Cassian had given his blessing for the riding lesson. “Dietz is at Cassian’s with two horses, Sander. He wants me to visit Tessa, who is ill and unhappy, and I want to go. I wasn’t running horses, I was learning to ride, and I’m quite good at it. I’d like to go so much.”
“Dietz is in town?”
“You’ll be so busy, and what can I do here in Comodoro? If I go to visit Tessa, I’ll be safe, and you won’t need to worry about me.”
Sander turned to Pieps. “You, boy, go to Dr. Tredegar’s and invite the doctor and Meneer Dietz to come join us.”
Minke whispered, “Sander, please! He’s not a servant.”
“He’s a skinner, Minke.” Sander ran a hand over his face.
“I brought you Goyo,” she said with a petulance she knew he wasn’t going to appreciate. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“Look at yourself,” he said. “Like a child with your hair all wild like that. You’re my wife, Minke. Behave like it.” He took a sip of brandy and blotted his lips with a napkin. “I need to know I can trust you.”
“Trust me! How can you say that? It’s not fair.” She poked him in the arm to get a rise out of him. “Astrid would have taught me to ride if she’d lived, remember? But Astrid is dead, and there are no women who will teach me anything, in case you haven’t noticed. The women here ignore me. They speak no Dutch. They don’t even meet my eyes when I pass. It’s as if I don’t exist, so what am I supposed to do? Maybe if I had a child, they would treat me better, but I don’t. I’m either alone or with men, and not by choice!”
He finished off his glass in a single swallow and waved for another. She had to control her voice. She was afraid of making a scene, aware of being watched wherever she went, whatever she did. He didn’t trust her! How was that possible? She knew nothing of men, nothing at all, apparently. And even less of Sander. Perhaps he needed reassurance. Perhaps that was it. She slipped her hand over his under the table and was encouraged when he didn’t remove it. “Our nights, my love,” she whispered, leaning in to him to breathe her words into his neck, desperate for him to understand. “I live for our nights.” She looked into his eyes. “You have to believe me.” He smiled, but she wasn’t convinced. “When you’re angry with me, I have no one, Sander. I’m alone.”
“They’re here.” He withdrew his hand and gestured to Dietz and Cassian. When Pieps made a move to join them as well, Sander stopped him. “This is a business meeting, young man. I’m afraid there isn’t room.”
She nudged him but was not about to press things any further, and Pieps had the grace to bow and withdraw.
They crowded around the little table, a haze of smoke resting overhead, a loud game of faro in a corner. Glasses and bottles were crammed on the table; a big bowl in the middle was filling with the ash from the men’s cigars. Cassian raised his glass. “Dietz has struck oil, Sander. Imagine that.” Those two had an understanding. She’d seen it often enough, as though they shared a secret language, so Cassian’s remark wasn’t so much praise of Dietz but something quite the opposite.
“Here, here,” Sander said, clinking glasses with Dietz and Cassian. “Where, may I ask?”
“To the west.” Dietz motioned vaguely with his free hand. “It’s just as they said. We float on a sea of oil here in Comodoro.”
Minke knew that only too well. Here and there canals of oil flowed in the open air. From the Cerro, those same streams resembled black ribbons glistening in the sun.
Dietz folded his hands over his belly. “And you, Sander? How is your business coming along?”
“Magnificent, eh, Cassian?”
Cassian nodded.
“Good for you, my friend,” Dietz said. “Good for you.”
“I understand Tessa wishes Minke to visit,” Sander said.
“Where’s that boy?” Dietz stood up and looked about the bar. “You!” he shouted. “Over here!” Pieps was instantly at the table. “I saw you ride today. You can accompany Mevrouw DeVries to my estancia.”
“Wait a minute, now,” Sander said. “I’ll decide who’s to accompany my wife. This boy is a skinner.”
“Goyo is your man, then,” Pieps said. “He knows every inch of Patagonia.” Pieps signaled the gaucho, who rose and approached. Dietz addressed Goyo in rapid Spanish, and the conversation became a spirited three-way among Dietz, Goyo, and Cassian. When it was over, Cassian said to Sander, “It’s done. He knows the estancia. You will pay them both, the money to be given to them on Minke’s safe return in several days’ time.”
“Both?” Sander said. “No, no. Only the gaucho.”
“Sander,” Cassian said, “he’s a good sort, but if something should happen, one man needs to stay while the other goes for help. It’s the way these things are done.”
“Splendid,” Dietz said. “Then it’s settled. Oh, and Minke, bring medicine to Tessa. She’s run out already.”
Minke eyed Sander warily. He’d been all in favor until Pieps got in the mix, and now he was unhappy, the lines of his mouth drawn down at the corners. “We must move our things to the house now that it’s ready.”
“All the more reason for her to be gone,” Dietz roared, grinding out his cigar. “A lady shouldn�
�t be asked to do that, Sander. Look around you. A dozen strong backs in this room are for hire.”
“He’s right, my friend,” Cassian said.
“Go ahead, then,” Sander said, without even looking at her.
SHE WAS TOO excited to sleep, and when at last she began to nod off, she was awakened by the sound of breaking glass. She sat up and checked her watch. Two A.M. This was their last night together, and Sander was spending it drinking and probably gambling in the hotel bar. She went to the window. Outside, a skim of light snow blew across the sand. She’d just go get him.
She covered herself with his robe, a striped woolen thing, heavy as a horse blanket, and tiptoed down the hall toward the chaos of the bar, where another glass or bottle of something smashed. A pair of glass doors separated the hall from the foyer of the hotel. She peered through to the table and spittoon, the shabby Persian rug and gas lamp. She drew back when two men stumbled from the bar into the foyer, bumping into each other, laughing, ready to go out into the cold night, bulky in their heavy coats and hats. They stopped at the door outside and, as if something had suddenly sobered them, cast a quick glance back toward the bar and kissed the way a man and woman kissed. In that same moment she recognized one of them as Cassian and almost called out to him but didn’t. He obviously didn’t want to be seen. She felt both shock and calm, as though this, whatever it was, was something she’d known all along. He swung open the door, and the two vanished into the night. She stood rooted in place. Now she understood the boys on the Frisia, the sense she often had when visiting him that someone else was present in the house.
She slipped into the foyer and peered into the Explotación bar. The smoke made it difficult to find Sander, but she made out the back of his head—tawny in this crowd of black-haired men—at the table in the corner. He was playing cards with Dietz and several other men. A stranger staggered toward her, blinded by drink, and she scurried back to her room, locked the door, and lay on the bed, listening.
Sander didn’t come back. At daybreak, a loud knocking woke her. She’d barely undone the latch when Sander charged into the room and fell facedown on the bed.