by Pam Lewis
At the very end, four stragglers descended the gangway—three men and a woman. The woman was clearly European; Minke knew that by her cabbage-colored coat. No woman in South America would own such a thing, or walk so aggressively. They milled about, checking on their luggage, but the men seemed to keep away from the woman, so Minke deduced they were traveling separately.
Dietz distracted Minke from the new people. He had assembled forty or fifty men who waited in a line for Dr. Pirie. One by one they sat opposite the doctor so he could look over each man’s papers and then examine his hands, eyes, and tongue before sending him to join another line. Eventually, they would all go to the barracks out near the oil wells. Dietz had struck oil many more times, and some of the wells were inside Comodoro itself.
The woman who had gotten off the tender was speaking to Dietz about something. She was bundled up, a hat with a scarf wound around her face against the wind. Dietz pointed down the beach, and the woman strode off with a definite sense of purpose.
She was looking for Sander! Sander, of all people. She ran to him, threw open her arms, and gave him a long hug. Who on earth? Could it be Griet? Sander and the woman spoke a bit longer, and she made Sander laugh. Sander turned to Minke and pointed to where she was sitting on the retaining wall with the other mothers. The woman raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun; she waved frantically. Minke waved back, still not knowing. The woman was running up the beach toward her, holding her skirts high. She stopped at the bottom of the seawall, out of breath. “Minke,” she screamed up at her. “It’s me. Fenna!”
11
FENNA RUSHED UP the ramp and took both Minke and Zef in a great crunching hug, then held them at arm’s length for a good look. “I’m really here!” she gasped, out of breath, her face flushed. “I can’t believe it. I’ve been throwing up for two weeks, but here I am at last.” She spotted the car. “Even Sander’s car, Minke. I remember the car!” She threw herself down on its hood, arms out, with one side of her face pressed against the warm yellow metal. She seemed to notice Zef for the first time, even though she’d practically suffocated him in her hug.
“Zef” was all Minke could manage.
Fenna plucked the child from Minke’s arms and held him out. Zef studied her back, this new person, then laughed and flapped his small hands in pleasure.
“He likes me,” Fenna said, returning him to Minke.
Minke could not stop staring. Could not take in the fact of her sister in this place. Fenna’s coat was askew, and she fixed on that detail, which seemed to prove it was in fact Fenna because one of her shoulders had always ridden slightly higher than the other. Jackets and coats gapped on the low side of her neck and rode up on the high side, giving her a look of perpetual untidiness.
“What’s the matter?” Fenna asked with a big grin. “Cat got your tongue?”
“It’s strange, seeing you here,” Minke said.
“Well, here I am,” Fenna barked, hands on her hips.
“I had no idea.”
“Not my fault, Minke.”
“I’m not talking about fault, Fenna, but you asked what was the matter, and I’m trying to explain. Can’t I simply be surprised?” Already they had entered into their old ways of bickering.
They piled into the car and drove the thousand or so yards up the hill to the house; Minke saw the whole town through her sister’s eyes. She had come to take for granted the open oil channels and no longer noticed the odor. But it didn’t escape Fenna. “This place smells worse than home.” Nor did she fail to notice the rusty metal siding on their house and the concrete slabs on the roof. “Why is all that crap on the roof?”
“To weigh it down,” Minke said.
“Why not just attach the roof to the house?” She barged inside without waiting for an answer. “Where am I to sleep?” she asked, looking around the small space. “Mama said you would live in a big house with plenty of room for me. But this is all very cramped. This is nothing like I expected. I thought we’d be rich. I can hardly believe this. And dirt floors, like peasants.”
“Boor.” It was the worst of insults, and Fenna was being exactly that, with her coarse mouth.
“You’ll take Marta’s place,” Sander announced.
“Sander!” Minke said. “I need Marta.” He couldn’t do this to her. Minke had come to depend on Marta, with her soft voice, gentle ways, and vast knowledge. “You can’t replace Marta just because Fenna shows up without warning. This is an outrage,” she hissed.
“Without warning,” Fenna said. “Hardly. Your husband sent for me.”
Minke must have heard wrong. “Without consulting me?”
“You need help with the child. She can take the place of Marta. And she speaks Dutch. You always complain that no one speaks Dutch. I’m under no obligation to consult you,” he said. “The matter is settled.”
“She won’t care for Zef, Sander. I won’t allow it.”
“She’ll do as I say.”
“I cook,” Fenna said. “I don’t need to take care of the baby. Show me the kitchen.”
Minke pointed to the table with its collection of gas burners.
“That’s your kitchen?” Fenna went to investigate.
Sander slipped his arms around Minke. “Don’t be cross with your Sander,” he said. “All will be well, I promise. And now we must come together and welcome Fenna into our home.”
They sat in the crowded little parlor, sipping celebratory brandy from tiny glasses. Fenna dug about in her bag and drew out an object wrapped in tattered white tissue and tied with a red ribbon. “Mama sent this.” Minke knew by the feel of it that it was Mama’s little silver keepsake box. Mama’s mother had given it to her, and as a child, Minke had loved to run her finger over the engravings on each of its six sides while Mama had explained what each one meant. There was love, harmony, trust, truth, fidelity, and tenderness. She was overcome with memories of home.
“Everything is going to hell,” Fenna said. “Papa lost his job, and now we take in boarders. I sleep with Mama and Papa in the closet bed again. They snore. They stink. Worse than here.” She’d taken off her coat and had on the plaid dress she’d worn the day Sander came to the house, too low in the front for a big girl.
“What’s the talk of war?” Sander asked.
Fenna shrugged. “The Germans took a Dutch ship and raised German colors. It’s all very boring, if you ask me.” She resembled Mama, particularly the way she rocked forward and back in her chair when making a point. “Mama said you would be sad and lonely.”
“I am not sad and lonely,” Minke said. “I’m very happy.”
“So you like it.” Fenna winked at Sander.
“Like what?” She wasn’t going for her sister’s bait. She was the married one; she was the one in charge of the household.
“Sander, is she still the ice princess, or have you thawed her?”
“You’ll mind your tongue in this house, Fenna,” Minke said.
“I’m only asking a question!” Fenna said indignantly. “And of Sander, not of you.”
Sander eyed them with indulgence, as if they were his two squabbling children.
“Your sister is a force to be reckoned with,” he said later that night, as they were preparing for bed.
“In what way?” Minke knew exactly what way but wanted to hear him say it, what everybody said at home, how inconceivable it was that the two of them were sisters. Chalk and cheese. Oil and water. She could tell him all sorts of things about Fenna, how hard it had been growing up always to be extra-good, extra-sweet, no trouble to Mama and Papa because of Fenna. And now Fenna was here. Now she was their problem.
“She doesn’t hold much back.”
“That’s putting it too mildly,” she snapped. “She holds nothing back.”
He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underclothes, pulling off his stockings. He stopped what he was doing. “Are we arguing?”
“No. Yes.”
“Why? What have I sai
d?”
“It’s what you did, Sander, inviting Fenna without a word to me. I’m in shock.”
“You need help. I thought you’d be happy. You mystify me, Minke.”
“Mama has washed her hands of her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I know Mama.”
Sander threw himself back on the bed, laughing. “Come here,” he said.
She lay down beside him.
“Take her around tomorrow. Introduce her to that boy Pieps at the skinners. Maybe he’ll have a job for her. And if he’s looking for a woman,” Sander said with a laugh, “which he no doubt is, she’ll be off our hands in no time.”
Minke tensed at the thought. She didn’t want to see that at all. Pieps was her friend.
Sander must have sensed her reaction. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s obvious. He’s a thoughtful person, and Fenna is all action.”
“Many men like a woman who is all action.” He lay a hand on her breast. She pulled away. “Now what?” he asked her.
“I can’t make love. I’m pregnant again.”
“Another?” He slumped onto his back. “Isn’t one enough for you?”
She had been so excited to tell him. Now she was miserable. “Well, I didn’t do this alone.” He said nothing. “We’re both responsible,” she added weakly.
“Elisabeth took care of these things.” He dragged his hands over his face.
“If you didn’t want children, Sander, then why did you marry me?”
“Just give me time to adjust to the news,” he said.
“I thought it would make you happy.”
“All the better your sister has come.”
IN THE MORNING Minke was nauseated, so it was Sander who took Fenna to meet Pieps. Afterward he reported that Fenna was not in the least impressed, that after the fishermen of Enkhuizen, she had known enough of men who smelled of animal guts. The good news was that they had continued on to the hotel, where Meduño had taken one look at Fenna in that low-cut plaid dress and hired her on the spot. So in the space of a single morning, everything was resolved. Better than resolved, because Marta could continue to help with Zef but sleep at her own house. Fenna would work at the Explotación in the afternoons, into the night. Sander would be free to work at the obras, where he was needed to keep the records and manage the money and inventory while Cassian saw to the actual production.
The following week, Minke and Fenna walked to the obras, pushing Zef in his rickety little pram across the rutted path. Minke wanted her sister to see its scale and importance. Tucked behind the Cerro, it had grown to consist of Cassian’s house and some larger structures, one large metal-sided building with stacks on top to emit the fragrant opium steam around the clock, another for the bottling, and between them a large courtyard where the paste was dried on metal sheets in the sun, protected from the wind.
Two young men stood guard at the entrance, the butts of their guns visible in the waists of their trousers; both bowed slightly to Minke, a gesture of respect that was sure to impress Fenna. Minke stopped and introduced her sister to them.
“Hola, señorita,” the boys said.
“Hola yourself,” Fenna said, and shimmied her bosom at them.
“Oh, Fenna,” Minke said, laughing, once they’d continued. “You’re incorrigible.”
At one end of the courtyard, eight or nine people with various ailments stood in line waiting to see Cassian, waiting for medicine. Again Minke greeted each of them. “They’re our customers,” Minke said. “They pay the bills.”
“Hola!” Fenna called out loudly to them, her accent making the word unintelligible. “Hola, hola! There. How was that?”
After the courtyard, they came to the small room Sander used as his office. It was just a corner of a larger space cordoned off by a hanging blanket and barely large enough to hold his desk and chair. The desk was piled with papers, all in disarray, unusual for Sander, who was generally tidy.
“The lovely van Aisma sisters,” he said, rising. He wore a dark vest over a crisp white shirt and looked so handsome with his amber hair, grown long now. He brought in chairs for them, took Zef in his lap, and spun to make the baby laugh.
Fenna began to regale Sander with gossip from the village, the same stories she’d already told Minke, of the vicar, the very same lecherous vicar who’d been at the wedding, and how he was found dead, frozen in an ice bank at the edge of the Zuiderzee. “And surely you remember Mevrouw Ostrander,” she said to Sander.
“The next-door neighbor.” Minke was bored with Fenna’s stories and annoyed to see Sander finding them amusing. “Her husband fell into the canal.”
“I’ll tell it,” Fenna said.
“Drowned?” Sander asked.
“Drunk,” Fenna said with delight. “They say it’s what saved him. He relaxed and floated to the surface.” She thought a moment. “An American was seen, too. A tall man in a brown suit walked through the streets. People said he was connected to the war. A spy.”
“Nonsense. The Americans have nothing to do with the war,” Minke said, tired of all this.
“The Americans have everything to do with everything,” Sander said.
“See?” Fenna said. “I told you.”
At that moment two gauchos in red bombachas and their funny porkpie hats came to stand in the line for morphine. “Those are gauchos!” Minke pointed to them. “See how they dress? They all dress like that. And see how bowlegged they are? They’re all bowlegged from living on horseback.”
“They steal little girls,” Sander said, and that got Fenna’s attention.
“That’s a rumor,” Minke said. “People say terrible things about them, but none of it’s proven.”
“What else do they say?” Fenna asked Sander.
“They ride only stallions, never mares.”
“They hunt on horseback,” Minke said. “They eat on horseback, probably sleep on horseback. They do everything on horseback.”
“Everything?” Fenna winked at Sander.
“Don’t be coarse.” Minke was furious that Fenna turned everything around like that.
“I’ll tell you who’s coarse. Your friend Dietz sticks money down the front of my dress every chance he gets. You’ve seen that plenty, I’ll bet. I take the money but don’t give him anything.” Fenna addressed Sander as if he was the only one present.
“Guess what he collects?” Minke said. “At the estancia in the country?”
“How should I know?” Fenna retorted.
“Shrunken heads,” Minke said. “Dozens of them.”
“One for you, Minke. Now it’s my turn. Guess who people hate most in this town? I’ll tell you who. Your friend out there.” She indicated the boiling room with a shake of her head. “That Tredegar.”
“What do you know about that?” Sander asked.
“All those boys!” Fenna said.
“The employees?” Minke asked. “What about them?”
Fenna rolled her eyes.
“They work here,” Minke said. “He takes care of them.”
“I’ll say he does,” Fenna said. “And you’ve got your head in the sand, as usual.”
“What is it they say, Fenna?” Sander pressed. “About Dr. Tredegar.”
“Men at the bar talk. They taunt the men whose sons live and work out here.” Fenna pointed out the window. “The fathers are ashamed.”
“What do you tell them?” Minke poked her sister’s arm harder than she’d intended. “People say such things, and what do you say back to them?”
“I earn my tips by keeping my mouth shut about such things.”
“What else, Fenna? Is there anything else we should know?” Sander asked.
“They say he has a tail under those fancy clothes, and cloven feet. People have seen it. And horns if you look closely enough under that cap of hair. You’ll be tarred with the same brush if you’re not careful.”
12
AS THOUGH FENNA’S words
had opened the floodgates of hell, a week later a gang of men attacked Cassian on the path behind the Cerro. His clothing was ripped from his body, and they left him for dead, naked on the gravel path. Fortunato, one of the guards from the obras, found him several hours later. The boy’s first thought was to get Sander. It was four in the morning, dawn already breaking, when Minke and Sander, leaving Zef behind with Fenna, drove at lightning speed over the rocky trail to the scene of the attack. Fortunato had covered Cassian with a blanket and lifted it to reveal his bare thigh, grossly shortened.
Cassian rasped that his femur was broken; the bone ends had been snapped past each other by the strength of his muscles. “Traction,” he groaned. “Now.” Through the pain, he instructed them. Fortunato pulled Cassian’s foot while Sander secured his upper body beneath the arms to keep the bone ends apart and the jagged edges from ripping open the artery.
“Get more help,” Sander called back to Minke.
Without a second thought, she cranked the car, got in, miraculously put it into gear, and sped back across the plain to the oil barracks, a long, windowless one-story building, where she hammered on the door with her fist and was met by shouting and swearing from inside. “Dr. Pirie!” she shouted. “It’s an emergency!”
The door opened, and there was Dietz, eyes at half-mast.
“Cassian has been hurt.”
“Hurt how?”
“Where is Dr. Pirie?” She was frantic.
“Get a grip on yourself,” Dietz said. “For God’s sake.”
“They can’t hold him forever.”
“You’re making no sense. Hold whom?”
“Dr. Pirie!” she screamed, hoping the doctor was within earshot.
Dietz took her by the shoulders. “Look here, girl. Stop this screaming at once. You’re waking my men. Pirie’s not here. What happened?”
“Dr. Pirie!” she screamed again.
Dietz turned back into the darkness of the barracks and let the door shut behind him.
She could think of only one other person. She drove north across the plain to the brick huts that housed the skinners. Inside, half a dozen men stood at skinning boards in the rank-smelling place. Pieps took one look, followed her to the car, and held on as they sped around the Cerro. People everywhere must have known something was happening because of all the dust kicked up by the car crisscrossing the plain. She explained over the noise of the engine what had happened.