Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  So the British stood and dusted their lapels. The Chinese set their cups down. A strange energy pervaded the room—a game, they all knew, had begun. And, like children agreeing to close their eyes and count to ten while someone hides, they extended politenesses. Hands were shaken, apologies offered. In German and English and Chinese, good-byes were said. Soon the Germans, hundreds of men barely twenty years old, were left amid the silence of their festooned warship, imagining, no doubt, that awful sound—one-two-three-four-five—unsure, though, who was counting and who was supposed to hide. They were in China, thousands of miles from Germany, from home. What did this mean?

  For this answer, the men looked to Vice Admiral Graf von Spee, striding into the abandoned elegance, the halted party of peacetime, in his gold-trimmed uniform.

  “Men,” he said. “Prepare the ship. Strip it for war and await further orders.”

  So the tapestries were hauled down, the carpets pulled from the floors. Into the bay they tossed everything: armchairs, sofas, pianos, paintings. The men, leaning over the gunwale, watched as porcelain vases bobbed across the harbor, as guitars and mandolins cartwheeled in the whitecaps. These waters, in which their ships had been moored for years, now seemed foreboding. It was only a matter of time before the British tried to begin a blockade and sink them at anchor, then only a matter of time before the Russians, the French, and the Japanese, perhaps, began the hunt as well.

  They knew they must escape—but to where?

  Amid the chaos, someone in the wardroom, a young officer with foresight, surveyed the now-naked room of steel and said to his friends beside him, “And so history is written.”

  Von Spee, studying his logbook, heard this and looked up. With a hint of that arrogance for which he was famous, he said to his men: “And so we will write it.”

  —Fleet of Misfortune: Graf von Spee and the Impossible Journey Home

  5

  Data Compiled for Professor Edward Beazley

  by the Royal Geographical Society

  Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore

  Te Pito O Te Henua, Known as Rapa Nui;

  Commonly Called Easter Island,

  South Pacific Ocean

  Latitude 28°10'S, Longitude 109°30'W

  1722 (Easter Day): Admiral Jacob Roggeveen (Netherlands):First documented contact with a naked population of mixed race who worshipped huge statues, “squatting on their heels with heads bowed down. . . . The stone images at first caused us to be struck with astonishment because we could not comprehend how it was possible that people who are destitute of heavy or thick timber, and also of stout cordage, out of which to construct gear, had been able to erect them; nevertheless some of these statues were a good thirty feet in height and broad in proportion.” Some natives were noted as having slit earlobes hanging to their shoulders, which they could tie up over the edges of their ears. Inhabitants were described as cheerful, peaceful, and well mannered, but expert at thievery. They swam and paddled to the ship in frail canoes.Through a misunderstanding, one native was shot aboard ship and a dozen were shot ashore. A tablecloth and several hats were recorded missing from the admiral’s ship.

  1770: Don Felipe González (Spain):Reported that the natives had their own script. He estimated a population of three thousand, but no children were to be seen. He noted large statues speckling the coast. A declaration addressed to His Majesty Carlos III of Spain was presented to natives who signed their names (in the form of birds and curious figures) “with every sign of joy and happiness.” The island was renamed San Carlos Island. After four days the Spaniards left and never returned to their “territory.”

  1774: Captain James Cook:Reported a decimated, poverty-stricken population of approximately 600 men and 30 women. Noting several heaps of stones in front of narrow descents, Cook suspected a network of underground caves in which natives were hiding. The natives refused access to these areas. The colossi were no longer venerated, and most looked to have been toppled. A Tahitian on board partially able to understand native dialect determined that the colossi were not divine images but memorials to deceased persons.

  Cook noted in his journal: “We could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures. . . . They must have been a work of immense time, and sufficiently show the ingenuity and perseverance of the islanders in the age in which they were built; for the present inhabitants have most certainly had no hand in them, as they do not even repair the foundations of those going to decay.”

  The expedition left with a small supply of sweet potatoes.

  1786: Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse (France):Noted approximately two thousand people on the island; Frenchmen were admitted to caves and subterranean passages where women and children had been hiding; it is believed the peaceful conduct of Captain Cook allowed for this access. Attempts to introduce pigs, goats, and sheep unsuccessful.

  1864:Brother Eugène Eyraud, a French Catholic missionary, settled on the island; it is believed that the majority of the population converted to Christianity. No statues were in upright position.

  1877:Population: 111 (reports of a smallpox epidemic related to raids by Peruvian slavers).

  1886:Visitation by George S. Cook, Surgeon, United States Navy, aboard the USSMohican.

  1888:Annexation by Chile.

  The Society wishes these questions pursued by investigators:

  How were the colossal statues crafted? Transported? Were they made by ancestors of current inhabitants or an earlier, vanished race?

  What caused the uniform collapse of the colossi?

  Is the script noted by González related to other known writing? What has been recorded in this script?

  Are natives related to other Polynesians or to South Americans?

  What is the diet?

  What is the family structure? The current ratio of men to women?

  Is or has polygamy been practiced?

  It is March 1912.

  Through the gray Atlantic the White Star liner steams forward. Three thick chimneys crown the boat. Just beyond the compass bridge, past the captain’s quarters, Alice and Elsa share a small wood-paneled cabin. Their new leather vanity cases rest on the dresser; on the butler table sits Pudding’s cage. The room is elegant, tidy. It is in Edward’s cabin, one door down, that they have jammed the crates of tents and saddlery and reference books. “Our equipment is rather important, and we can’t have it walloped around in the cargo bay,” he explains to any passengers who see him emerging, harried, from this maze of gear. Brushing off his jacket, he says, “We are going on an expedition.”

  In fact, at any opportunity, Edward speaks of the trip. At breakfast, at tea, as he passes the sugar across the finely laid table, he says, “Did we mention that after this we are making our way to the South Pacific?” Sometimes he asks, “Do you have family in Boston?” or “Is it business that takes you to Massachusetts?” merely to await the same question, so that he can respond, “Boston is a mere starting point for us!” He converses with architects, with American steel magnates, with lonely Cambridge dowagers, displaying with strangers, notes Elsa, an ease he is unable to muster with her.

  On the fifth day, when they awake to thunderclouds bruising the horizon, they retreat to the red-carpeted lounge for a game of bezique. There they are approached by an elderly man who announces that he is Andreas Lordet of Belgium, that he is an experienced traveler, that for three years he administered the famous Lemaire copper mine in the Congo, and that he intends, for a brief interval, to join them.

  The man sits; he looks wearily at the rain-smeared windows. He is waiting, he says, for his wife to join him. Then slowly, meticulously, he scans them: Edward first, then Elsa, then Alice. His eyes rest a moment on Alice, intrigued by the wad of playing cards held tightly in her hand, and by the way she holds the cards out in front of her, as though unsure of whether to offer them, magicianlike, or to embrace them. With a quick flash of his wrinkled ha
nd, he summons the waiter and orders a gin.

  “Congo,” Edward says. “I myself spent extensive time in German East Africa. I am an anthropologist and we are now, all of us, in fact, beginning an expedition to Easter Island.”

  “Ah, yes. Anthropology,” the man ponders. “Hmmmph.” His eyes close, opening only when he hears the waiter approach with his drink. “Merci,” he tells the man, followed by a long swallow of gin.

  “Of course,” says Edward, “the South Pacific is vastly different from the African continent.”

  “Africa! Yes!” he exclaims. Then, eagerly, he begins the story of his experience with what he calls “savage discontent”—a phenomenon about which he hopes soon to write a scholarly paper. An anthropologist such as Edward would no doubt take interest in his observations. And on he goes with tales of stolen revolvers and bands of natives, of poisoned arrows raining from the sky, finishing each story with a swig of gin, as though still astonished at his ability to survive such danger. “Bien sûr.” He thumps his emptied glass on the table beside him. “Yet, here I am. You see?” He knocks his fist against his chest. “One must have strength. Courage.Resolve. And then such uprisings will merely be”—his hand flaps in the air—“a cure for boredom.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier,” asks Elsa, drawing a new card from the table, “to stay in Belgium and go to the theater?”

  He turns to Edward. “Theater?”

  Elsa reorders her cards with great concentration. She is tired of playing audience to this tedious man.

  “Well. What you say of courage is indeed true,” says Edward. “The foreigner has many new and unsettling experiences. The change in diet alone can be a cause for alarm.”

  “Théâtre?”the man repeats, giving the word its full French pronunciation.

  You sound like a brute, Elsa wants to tell him. Uprisings as a form of amusement! She’s heard enough. And why must Edward be so diplomatic? She knows he agrees with her—in his own book, Edward emphasized the need for imperial subjects to respect the peoples of their colonies. But a row? Edward won’t have it. She’d like to remind him of his own book’s final chapter, “Toward Greater Understanding,” her favorite: the one part of his writing that made her think Edward, in addition to collecting and compiling data, harbored a deep sympathy for his subjects. But now she wonders at the sincerity of his feelings.

  Suddenly, the man looks past Elsa. “Hélène!”

  Elsa turns. A finely dressed woman of seventy or so strides toward them. A thick gold necklace clings to her chest. Three broad bangles anchor each of her wrists. Edward rises, and Andreas conducts introductions. Finally, the woman sits carefully on the edge of her seat and turns to her husband.

  “Nous parlons de voyages,”he says.

  Edward says, “We are headed for the South Pacific. On an expedition for the Royal Geographic Society.”

  “Ah,le Pacifique du sud. Well, you must beware of mosquitoes. You have lots of quinine, I hope. You can never have too much quinine.”

  Do these people, Elsa wonders, love nothing more than to alert others of danger?

  “Quinine?” asks Alice, who Elsa sees has accumulated almost an entire deck of cards in her fist.

  “Qui-nine,” answers Madame Lordet. “You use it for the treatment of the malarial fever. It is taken from the bark of a tree. A dose of three drops at bedtime is best.”

  “Fever?!” Alice’s hands slacken, and several cards flutter to the floor.

  The woman’s head tilts contemplatively to one side.

  “We have tents with nets,” Elsa says. “Mosquito nets. Don’t worry, Allie.”

  “Fever?”

  “Ma chérie.Do not be worried,” says Madame Lordet, her voice gentle. “You will just tell the mosquito to go away and leave you alone! You will say ‘Shoo,’ and he will fly off!”

  Alice smiles, tosses her cards to the side.

  “I think somebody has won the game!” Madame Lordet leans toward Elsa, necklace jangling, and whispers, “My niece in Antwerp”—she shakes her head with regret—“is just the same.”

  After the card game, Madame Lordet offers to take Alice to the parlor to cheer the Ping-Pong matches. “My Adèle just adores watching the balls go back and forth,” she says, lifting a pale finger to illustrate the motion.

  “Well,” Elsa begins politely, “Alice has a variety of interests more stimulating than ball-watching.” How tiresome, though, the endless assumptions. “You might ask her to draw your portrait. She’s quite a good artist.”

  “An artist!” The woman smiles, shakes her head in wondrous delight, as though before her has pranced a monkey in a top hat. “Merveilleux.”

  Elsa strains a smile and offers a polite good-bye, planting a kiss on Alice’s honeyed scalp. From the table she picks upOn the Origin of Species and tucks it in the crook of her arm. Edward smiles; the book, a handsome first edition, was his wedding gift to her. The night before leaving England, he presented her with a collection of Darwin: five books, each bound in burgundy leather, the spines lettered in gold, and her new, married initials—EPB—embossed on all the title pages. She has been carrying this volume from her cabin to the deck to the lounge without a moment, yet, for study. Now she can steal a few minutes.

  Elsa climbs the steps to the boat’s upper deck, but no sooner has she reached the windy promenade than she thinks of turning back. She is sickened by the idea of this woman dragging Alice through the parlor like a pet. Elsa tries to shake the image from her mind. Her father always admonished her for this—her desire to argue Alice’s abilities. Alice was Alice, he said, no matter how she was perceived. Ignorance wounded only the ignorant. But for Elsa, it was a matter of defending Alice’s honor. Even if each contemptuous stare could be disregarded, she couldn’t help but feel that left unchecked, the weight of them all might soon press against Alice. And part of Elsa suspected her father was simply too tired, too old, for outrage. She had seen him outraged just once in her life: She had been nine years old, sitting in Dr. Chapple’s London consultation room with her father and Alice, listening as the doctor explained the medical specifications of amentia—state of restricted potentiality . . . arrest of cerebral development . . . insufficient cortical neurons—at the time, an endless muddle of syllables to Elsa, but words she would hear again for years to come. What Elsa did understand was that Dr. Chapple said there were places they could send Alice—the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster, the Sandlebridge School for the Feeble-Minded—places that would accommodate, and this phrase etched itself in Elsa’s mind,mental defectives . Elsa finally slid forward in her chair and asked what to her seemed the most relevant question: “Can you fix her?”

  “I’m afraid, my dear girl,” said the doctor, removing his glasses for this final pronouncement, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “the condition of amentia, though its external manifestations can be reduced through a proper balance of stimulus and rest, is both permanent and untreatable.”

  Her father nodded silently.

  The doctor then began scribbling. “However, take one part caraway seeds, one part ginger and salt, and spread it on bread with a touch of butter. This has been shown successful at temporarily quelling mild episodes of hysteria.” Her father’s gaze was fixed on the floor, so Elsa accepted the doctor’s paper.

  Once they were outside, on the steps of Dr. Chapple’s office, after the door had closed behind them, her father raised his hand and slapped Elsa’s face. He had never done this before.

  “Understand this,” he said. “Alice does not need to be fixed. She needs to be cared for. And you will not now or ever refer to any of Alice’s behavior as a problem or defect. Do I need to repeat myself?”

  Elsa’s head dropped—she had meant only to see if they could help Alice. She refused to answer. Was she not the one who always fought on Alice’s behalf? Suddenly a shriek erupted beside her—Alice, hand raised above her head, face flushed with anger, began to twist and spin, until the propeller of her arm landed with a firm thwack
on their father’s stomach. She swung back for another strike, but their father caught her wrist. His eyes were mapped with capillaries.

  “Alice. My little Alice.”

  But Alice only glared at him, the vein on her forehead plump with rage, her narrow chest rising and falling with exertion. He released her wrist and Alice again launched her arm.

  “Allie,” said Elsa, grabbing her. “It’s all right.”

  Their father stared down at them as though searching for the just response. This was too much for him; Elsa could see it. It was the first time he had shown such exhaustion, such confusion. He shook his head, then walked down the steps toward the busy London street.

  “Elsa, I hit him!” Alice wrenched free from Elsa’s grip. “I hit Papa. Did you see me?” She sprang to her toes and began to bounce.

  Tugging Alice by the sleeve, Elsa hurried down the steps until they flanked him. “Father,” said Elsa. “Please . . . Father.”

  He did not stop; he did not even look at them.

  “I’m sorry, Father.”

  “Hmmnn? What is it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Elsa’s sorry!” shouted Alice.

  He seemed disoriented. “You must catch your breath, Elsa. Calm yourself. Why have you let yourself get flustered?”

  “Elsa’s sorry!”

  “Elsa? Sorry? What on earth for?” He glanced up at the sky and sighed, a long, tired sound that seemed to have taken years to work its way out of him. “No. No one needs to be sorry. No one. Let’s get home before dark.”

  And together they walked down the sidewalk in silence, as though nothing had happened.

  On the boat’s rain-washed promenade, Elsa hears the rumble of the engine, the sharp voice of a mother forbidding her child to run, the murmurs of a couple leaning on the railing to watch the sun break through the clouds. The rain has stopped, but a cold wind sweeps the deck. She trails her fingertips along the chilly rail and surveys the horizon. No England; no Europe. Is it really possible to leave the past behind? To begin anew? But Elsa knows all too well this yearning in herself. When leaving home for her first governess post, she had imagined she could start afresh, could unhinge her former frame of solemnity and let herself curl into a new, carefree girl, the kind she had always envied. But the frame was too old, and, despite her hopes, despite her efforts, it held firm.