Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  Seating herself on a dry bench, Elsa opensOn the Origin of Species. She’s read some of this before—her father, of course, had a copy; and often it could be found in the libraries of her employers. But this isher volume. Burgundy leather, beautiful. She smiles at the thought that she can crease the pages. She can mark the margins. She can drip tea across the pristine ivory pages. “First edition” means little; what matters is that the book is her own, and as such should bear traces of her use. With this in mind, Elsa turns to the introduction and with her thumb and forefinger nicks the page’s upper corner. There. She looks up, hoping, perhaps, that someone has seen her. A silly gesture, she knows, but it fills her with a sudden satisfaction, as if this small act of destruction, of rebellion, has for a moment offset the prudence of all her other choices.

  Elsa begins reading, and with her pencil underlines passages of interest. This, too, gives her great pleasure, and she wonders if some primitive instinct is at work. Her pupils always scrawled their names on lesson books—front covers, back covers, random pages—as if they had an unwavering need to document the event of their learning, to mark the territory their minds traveled. Am I no different, she wonders, than a schoolgirl hoping that a few possessions will remind the world of my existence?

  She reads on.

  There is a striking parallelism in the laws of life throughout time and space; the laws governing the succession of forms in past times being nearly the same with those governing at the present time. . . .

  The words seem to flow through her.Past times, present time —yes, there is a largeness to it all, something beyond her, beyond this vast steamer and this endless ocean. Elsa pencils a note, turns the page, and suddenly senses herself smiling. I love this, she thinks. I feel like a true scholar. All those grammar and geography and mathematics lessons gone—here is Darwin; here is an amazing theory.

  A burst of laughter distracts her—farther down the deck two young women in leghorn hats are strolling. Their eyes are locked on a young man reading, and as they pass him, there is another burst of laughter that draws his attention from the magazine. This brief game won, the women lean into each other, whispering, their hats forming a canopy above them. There is an ease in these women, a carelessness Elsa envies. She has never been like that. Since childhood, she has lived in constant vigilance. Always she has had Alice to look after, her father to tend to. Alice needed her patience. Her father, her obedience. And when she became a governess, Elsa begrudgingly acquired the most difficult, for her, of dispositions—humility. Over time, these duties had produced in her a seriousness that made others uneasy. Made men uneasy. She was not, after all, ugly; her skin was smooth, her hair chestnut and silken, though a little thin. When she looked at herself in the mirror, her features seemed soft and balanced, and she thought she must be as pleasant to look at as the next girl. Still, the tension in her demeanor made men look past her to more lighthearted girls. Even Max, who shared her gravity, had drawn back from it at first.

  Several days after his return from Kiel, he came to say hello in the schoolroom. Elsa was at the table with Otto and Huberta, reviewing English prepositions, when he walked over, extended one hand, and laid it for a moment on each child’s head. Looking down at their lesson books, he asked Otto, the oldest, in English, “And how do you like the new governess?”

  “Sehr gut, Papa.”

  “Have we brought her all the way from England to help you speak German?” He turned to Elsa. “Have you settled in well?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Prepositions?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent.”

  And with that, he left. An entire month passed before he spoke to her again. But she thought his disinterest a sign she was doing her job well. The staff was the foundation of a household—best unseen.

  Their next conversation had to do with a pocket watch Huberta had taken from her father’s office and, when Elsa tried to retrieve it, let tumble down the marble staircase. When Elsa picked it up, she saw the glass face had been cracked. And rather than have Huberta—who was hopelessly fitful and clumsy, who sometimes reminded her of Alice—disciplined, Elsa told the head maid she had broken it herself and that the repair costs should be taken from her wages.

  The next day he interrupted her while she was giving lessons. He said there was a debt to be discussed.

  “I’m sorry, sir?” Elsa closed the lesson books and rested her hands in her lap.

  “My watch. What has inspired you to pay for the repair?”

  Huberta, whose English was progressing rapidly, squirmed in her seat.

  “I don’t understand.” But suddenly Elsa did: The watch was already damaged when Huberta snatched it. “Ah, yes, sir. I apologize.”

  He lingered for a moment, looking at his children and the books, his eyes resting on Elsa.

  “It was given to me when I was thirteen.”

  “What was, sir?”

  “The watch, it belonged to my father.”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “It has meaning for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “For one who teaches conversation, your English is quite limited.”

  Elsa did not like to be goaded. This was a danger of her position she had resolved to guard herself against. Employers were moody. Some days—if it was rainy, if they had not slept well—they might decide to draw out the details of your life, or offer theirs. Afterward they feared you would take it too far, abandon your work and gossip all day, and so they grew colder, struck a pose of even greater superiority. If you had let yourself believe in the friendship, this was a blow. It was easier, and safer, never to test that path.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Very well, then. Continue with your lessons,” he said. “And if the urge strikes, do teach them some compound sentences.”

  They did not speak again until the day she received a letter from her father about the drafting of the Feeble-Minded Control Bill. Elsa had gone to her favorite garden bench to read, and had become visibly upset. When Max, out walking, saw her, when he asked what was the matter and motioned if he might sit down, Elsa was too unhappy, too preoccupied, to respond. Her mind was with Alice, and so when he sat beside her, that was of whom she spoke—she described Alice’s episodes, her abilities, the termamentia, the details of the legislation. Elsa’s openness risked impropriety, but Max didn’t seem to mind. He seemed intrigued by Alice’s predicament, as though it were a great riddle offered up for him to solve. He stroked his beard and stared straight ahead as Elsa spoke. The wind rustled the tree above them, and as the sun set, long shadows, like awnings, fell from the hedges. There was a sense of sanctuary on that bench, and Elsa understood very clearly that his empathy for her could be expressed only there. It was her understanding of this, she suspected, that put him at ease.

  Even after other encounters, after he began leading the children on long hikes that he insisted she join, for hours teaching them the names of the trees and shrubs they passed, even after he had sought her out several times, alone, when his wife, Margarete, was calling on friends, Elsa never behaved toward him as anything but her employer. It was a friendship, a simple companionship, which neither dreamed would escalate. They could talk easily, and they liked each other, though Elsa wasn’t sure at first what it was she liked in him. Max was attractive, but she never thought herself greatly impressed by that. He was intelligent, but Elsa had often met intelligent men at the university. Max, however, was the first person she’d ever met who needed no looking after. From time to time, she would overhear him lose his temper in some distant wing of the house, his voice rising for a moment about a telegram belatedly delivered, a door left unlocked, but it would subside quickly. He never looked upset, never tired, never nervous, and it was a bit of a joke among the servants that his self-sufficiency drove them mad. In him dwelled an awesome strength to which Elsa was drawn, though by attraction or envy, she couldn’t say. And then, unexpectedly, she fell in l
ove. She sometimes wondered if being so far from Alice had allowed her indiscretion. Had Alice been with her, it would never have happened. Of that she feels certain.

  But Elsa is happy, now, to have Alice with her. And gradually her doubts concerning the trip are subsiding. Edward has promised they will turn back if the journey proves too much for Alice, but so far it thrills her. In Southampton, as the ship set out, she hooted and waved to the harbor crowd. She has explored and drawn each level of the steamer. And the amenities of travel—the books, the bags—enchant her. Several times a day, Alice opens her small leather satchel, examines the contents, then seals and stows it beneath the bed. In it she has arranged a comb and looking glass, a small pair of scissors for Pudding’s nails, a photograph of their father, the perfumed silk sachet that Elsa bought her, a bundle of chalk and crayons fastened with blue ribbon, a pair of binoculars, the silver candy bowl from Edward’s sitting room (which she scrambles to position on the dresser each time before Edward is permitted to enter their cabin—“Not yet!” she cries as he lingers in the doorway, sure to keep his palms held firmly over his eyes), and, despite Elsa’s insistence that she would have no need for it, a German-English dictionary—the same item Alice watched Elsa pack the first time she left home.

  Of course, the longest, most arduous part of the voyage is still ahead. Tropical climates, strange languages, peoples of unknown dispositions. The potential for danger is, Elsa knows, quite real. But wasn’t there danger in England? The whole business of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, their endless articles and proposals, the bill they tried to slip through Parliament to mandate institutionalization—it terrified her. Her father, in his last months, had posted three letters to theDaily Telegraph decryingThe Journal of the Eugenics Education Society and their claims that sterilization could prevent the spread of idiocy. “Spread!” he coughed from his bed, hurling the journal to the floor. “Do they think this is smallpox?” Even more unsettling was one of the names on the masthead of theEugenics Review —Dr. William Chapple—the man they had turned to years before to diagnose Alice’s condition.

  When Elsa and Edward were clearing her father’s office, in her father’s desk drawer she found the last few volumes of theReview. Why, she wondered, did he hold on to them? Did he think that in his drawer he might control their contents? How typical of Father to assume his constant obsession, his ten-page letters, would solve the problem. Never was he guilty of indolence, never of surrender. His hard work, however, could be so misdirected. Textiles—a serious investment, but dreadfully ill-advised. Looking around at the dusty books, the boxes of papers—the bulk of her inheritance—Elsa thought: I am penniless. It would take more than her vigilance to make sure Alice didn’t find herself in the hands of maniacal doctors. Elsa pulled the volumes from the drawer and scanned the clutter for a waste-basket.

  “Please, Miss Pendleton,” said Edward from across the room. “Do have a rest. I’d be pleased to deal with this untidiness. This sort of thing is always trying on one’s feelings.”

  “I’m fine, Professor Beazley,” she said, the coolness in her voice obviously startling him out of his tender moment. He seemed disconcerted by her lack of bereavement, by the calm she had shown at the funeral. Why did Edward and everybody else expect she would be consumed by emotion? If she hadn’t so many other concerns, she might have been. “I’m merely looking for a place to dispose of this idiotic rubbish.” Elsa glanced around; everything, actually, looked like a trash bin—suitcases and crates stuffed with papers, books, and broadsides. Finally Elsa tore up one volume at a time and let the pieces tumble to the floor. “There. Now I won’t mistake them for anything worth saving.”

  “I understand your irritation. The Eugenics Education Society. An awful business.”

  “Father no doubt told you all about it.”

  “Some. Yes.” Edward shook his head. “It is an outrage, really. This is what Britain’s medical experts concoct? Not a cure, not a remedy, not even an attempt to ease the discomforts of those who are troubled. But isolation? Imprisonment? Sterilization?” His hands flew up. “Good God.”

  This sudden passion surprised Elsa—Edward had been silent through the morning as they filled the crates. But the contagion of his anger swept her; and she was happy to be permitted a display of frustration.

  “They’re frightened fools, Professor Beazley. Not a single doctor in eighteen years has been able to explain what happened to Allie. Over twenty so-called professionals consulted, and none of them could say if she began this way; if she was injured in birth. The doctors can’t move one foot toward identifying the source of such differences, and so what do they want? They want all those different people to disappear, because their existence reminds the doctors of their own incompetence.”

  “It is a case of Britain’s sense of nationhood gone too far. This focus on the good of the political unit rather than the good of the individual. It’s an appalling feature of our culture. Among the Hoonai and the Mugundi of East Africa, those born with impediments or unusual features are seen as children of the gods given to humans to look after.”

  “Perhaps I should take Allie to East Africa.”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Pendleton. We won’t let anything happen to Alice.”

  Yes, Elsa thinks, even then he said “we.”We won’t let anything happen . . . Before he had proposed, as though anticipating Alice would be his concern. And how coldly she had behaved. Could she have known he would help her out of the very situation that made her act with such detachment?

  When he had spoken of this journey to the South Pacific, he spoke of Alice’s protection, of the safety of foreign shores. “Elsa, both you and your father have always made certain that Alice was cared for by the people who love her. This voyage—well, it most certainly won’t resemble England—but it will be with her family, with the people who care for her. It will be good for her.Desideratum . No risk of horrid legislation taking her from you, from us.”

  He was right.

  Only Elsa hopes the people of Easter Island are as forgiving as the Hoonai and the Mugundi.

  Evenings, they work in the ship’s lounge.

  “Before we even arrive we shall be experts,” says Edward, seated on the edge of a velvet sofa, sorting papers. He has boxes of correspondence from Royal Geographic Society members. Others, reading of the expedition in the papers, have written to offer services; thirty-two steward applications alone clutter his pile. Geologists have requested rock specimens from each port of call. Some correspondents have provided theories—I must inform you, Professor Beazley, that your mystery island is part of the lost continent of Lemuria (see enclosed map), of which I am an original inhabitant;others, warnings—“And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast and of every creeping thing, that creepeth upon the earth and every man.”You venture thousands of miles when the answer to your “mystery” is right there in the Lord’s Scripture? Do not incite His wrath!

  Separating the letters of immediate use has fallen to Elsa. But it is like searching for a clover in a field of grass; theories and warnings obscure each relevant fact. Yet she soon finds herself reading on even after she has extracted the data.I have always wanted to travel myself. I once dreamed of an island in the Pacific. My son, taken last year by the consumption, wanted to be an archaeologist. This glimpse into lives she will never encounter—it is just one more door of novelty the expedition opens. So leisurely, to faint tango staccatos drifting from the ballroom below, she compiles a list of Polynesian phrases.Hello, peace, horse, food, freshwater —in Tahitian, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Tongan. She also details the island’s climate, its average rainfall and temperatures. Domestic plants and animals get their own list. And from this data her mind begins to form a picture of their mysterious destination: grassy slopes, hundreds of grazing sheep, strong wi
nds hurling in from the sea.

  “I don’t have a book! Why don’t I have a book?” Alice, seated on the floor, dutifully unfolding the letters for Elsa’s pile, stops her work. She focuses on Elsa. “Alice must have a book.”

  “But you’ve your very own journal, Allie,” Elsa says.

  “I do. I have my own journal. What do I put in it?”

  “Anything you like, Alice,” Edward says warmly, looking up from the mess of papers before him. His work relaxes him.

  “Pictures. Why, you should be the official expedition artist,” says Elsa.

  “My book is in the room. I want to get it.”

  Their cabin is only yards away, and Elsa tells Alice she may walk, slowly, to the room, retrieve her book, and return immediately. In a flash Alice is gone. Elsa closes her book and watches the narrow passageway. When Alice reappears, she has her journal in one hand, Pudding’s cage in the other.

  “Allie.”

  “He wanted to see the boat!”

  “Set him down, there, beside the sofa. This is a lounge. If he begins to caw, we’ll have to take him back.”

  “Keep quiet, Pudding. Or Elsa’s going to take you away.”

  Alice dramatically perches herself in a chair, mimicking Elsa’s studious posture, and spreads the blank book in her lap.

  “What will you draw in it?” Elsa asks.

  “Who is on the expedition?”

  “We are. You, me, and Edward.”