Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  At the Admiralty in Berlin, hope for von Spee’s survival was waning. Kaiser Wilhelm, his sympathy ignited for this lonely commander, tried to send words of encouragement: “God be with you in the impending stern struggle.” But von Spee, beyond range of the radio transmitter at Tsingtao, never received the message. He was operating in solitude, without the means to contact his country, his supply ships, or the other German warships in his squadron.

  He needed to find a rendezvous point, a spot in the Pacific where he could try to bring the squadron together. He would have to break radio silence for this, risk the interception of the message in the hope of uniting his forces. But it was necessary.

  The only question was where. Studying the map, searching for a safe harbor, he soon found the perfect place, a place he had once read about, where Captain Cook had voyaged, where strange giant statues lined the shore. A place that was the farthest one could get from the rest of the world: Easter Island.

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

  11

  On a thin strip of sand on the island’s northern coast they make their camp.

  Everything stowed in the hold must be rowed ashore through the rough surf. As the schooner heaves above the ocean, Elsa steadies herself and drowsily unties the crates and bags and buckets.

  The previous night has drained her. The native visitors—forty of them, she finally counted—refused to disembark until they tired of their ceremony of welcome. This involved an elaborate exchange of wood carvings and sweets, bananas and tobacco, taro and tea. In the flurry of excitement, Edward’s hat was swapped for a frantic chicken; then, moments later, the chicken’s forlorn owner snatched it back. But when Alice carried Pudding’s cage on deck, when a wave of awed whispers swept the visitors, the owner of the chicken came forward, suggesting, through a series of arm-flapping gestures, an exchange of chicken for parrot. Then Edward stepped in. “Not for eating. It is a pet. A friend.Un amigo. ” His refusal clearly offended the group, but soon Alice began blowing kisses to Pudding, who saidsuperior bird, and the affront was lost in their amazement. One of the men, his arms covered thickly with tattoos, wearing a red hat with brass buttons, then began to conduct a song. But he cut it short with a grunt of disdain when the younger boys, sidetracked by the discovery of Elsa’s corset, garbled the words.

  In a mixture of Spanish and Tahitian, Edward tried to rally workers for the next day. “Carry? Llevar?”As the islanders stared, he dramatically lifted a box full of tinned meats. “See:Ca-rry. Work. Anga?”

  “Tangata rava-anga,”said Elsa.

  A young boy with thick, cowlicked hair stepped forward and took the box from Edward.

  “Maururu,”somebody mumbled.Thank you.

  “Well, it is to be expected,” Edward said, near dawn, when the islanders slipped gracefully over the gunwale and into their canoes, callingiorana as they studied their lapfuls of biscuits and beans and cigarettes, the slim daggers of their boats stabbing toward the coast. A month’s supplies had been lost in the greeting. “It is the best way to gain their trust. You’ll see. They will no doubt extend the traditional courtesy of hosts. It was the same, at first, with the Kikuyu.”

  Now it is morning and Kierney and Eamonn have to make off quickly in search of the Chilean Company ship, which anchors by the village at the island’s opposite side. Exhausted, nervous, Elsa stands on the schooner’s deck and bids them good-bye. She does wish they could stay, if only for a few days. As they lob their bags into the dinghy, she gives them extra stores of tea and coffee. “Are you sure you’ll be able to find the ship? Maybe you should wait and we can all find it together. To be safe.”

  “If there’s one thing I know how to find, Mrs. Beazley,” Eamonn says, climbing down into the dinghy, “it’s a boat I’m suppos’d to be on.”

  A duffel then comes hurling over the gunwale and thumps into the dinghy. “To the sea, again!” Kierney hollers from behind. He jogs along the deck, clutches the gunwale, and vaults himself onto the ladder. Pausing, he looks past Elsa to where Edward and Alice, belowdecks, are unpacking a crate. He grins and whispers, “It ain’t too late to sneak off with us.”

  “Are you suggesting,” she laughs, “that I just traveled twenty-three hundred miles to head right back to Valparaíso?”

  “We could have some fun.” He winks. “You need some fun.”

  “Kierney, after all these months, have you still no sense of propriety?”

  As he stares at her, she feels a blush crawl down her face. “Seems not,” he says, snatching the tins of tea and coffee at her feet. “But I got first-rate vision.” He laughs and leaps into the dinghy. “Best o’ luck to Captain Beazley and the two Mrs. Beazleys!”

  Edward appears on deck. “Ah, the men are ready? Excellent.” He eases himself down the ladder, pushes the dinghy off, and rows toward the shore. Elsa watches the two men jump onto the beach and dart up the embankment, duffels slung over their shoulders, arms spilling with tins. At the top of the hill, a half-dozen islanders mounted on horses are monitoring the activity. Kierney and Eamonn, gesturing and pointing to the sea, approach them. Soon they each hand over the tins she has just given them, and mount the horses behind the islanders, wedging their duffels in their laps. The overweighted animals plod along the coast, receding in the distance, and then out of sight.

  The few remaining islanders watch the activity of the boat and Edward’s efforts to row back to the schooner, but make no move to help. They do, however, wave.

  “Work may not be an ethic indigenous to the Rapa Nui,” says Edward as he climbs out of the dinghy, his face sunburned and glistening with sweat. He pulls out his monogrammed handkerchief and mops his forehead. “But at least they seem to be quite sociable.” From the stale crumbs of their predicament, he is clearly trying to paste together a bit of cake. He did not, to be fair, expect Elsa and Alice to haul everything ashore. But now they have no choice.

  The day is hot and windless. It is March, almost one year since they left England, but it is a different March from the one they left. Here, it is summer’s end.

  The only one not tired, Alice revels in the landing. She flings the blankets and buckets and tins of tea to the dinghy below, where Edward arranges them and then paddles ashore to unload. This endless chain of loading, rowing ashore, and unloading fills the day. They break only at noon to take shade belowdecks.

  By sunset, they have pitched two makeshift tents on the beach and piled most of their equipment on the grass. The dinghy has been pulled onto the sand. And whether by habit or desire, when they agree it is finally time to retire, Elsa retreats to the tent with Alice. Even in his exhaustion, Edward comments: “Don’t you think it’s time Alice had some space to herself?”

  Elsa pauses beneath the loose web of mosquito netting. She raises her lantern and studies him—his tall form, his broad shoulders, his look of need. After months on the boat, sleeping separately, after hours of setting up camp, how can this possibly matter to him now? If only he had some sense of timing, of the natural rhythms of these things. If only he could understand that she did not, tonight, of all nights, want to begin their intimacy. “Edward, please.”

  “Never mind,” he says. “Never mind.”

  But he remains in the sand, in his wrinkled white captain’s suit, his eyes glowing with indignation. Fatigue, it seems, has intoxicated him.

  “Oh, just a minute,” Elsa spits out. And in that one phrase the mounting pressure of all her former delicacy erupts. The journey is now over; the adversity of weather and rations is gone; the challenge that has for the past year forged their friendship, their union, has vanished. They’ve made it. And with their lives no longer in danger, it seems to Elsa as though the right to feel bothered, the liberty to be annoyed—suspended during those months of hardship—has been granted once again.

  It is clear Edward senses this. He stands in the moonlight, surprised and bewildered.

  But how can she resent him when she haschosen to ma
rry him,chosen to come on this voyage? His solitary crime has been offering her her only viable choice, a compromised salvation that circumstances forced her to accept. He has, in fact, been good to her.

  “Just one minute, dear,” she calls. “I’m going to say good night to Alice.” Elsa ducks into the green glow of the tent, and kisses her.

  “Pudding too.”

  Pudding’s cage is on the floor. Elsa blows the bird a kiss. “Good night, Pudding.”

  Alice giggles. “You’re so mad at Beazley.”

  “We’re just tired. That’s all. Tired. We’ll be right outside in the next tent.”

  “You’re sleeping there?”

  “Yes, Allie.”

  “What about us?”

  “You and Pudding will be fine. If you need anything, call for me. All right?”

  “Don’t forget to come back in the morning.”

  “You’ll call for me if you need anything?”

  “If bats come, I will call for you.”

  “Allie.”

  “Or those mosquitoes.” Already Alice has mummified herself in the sheets.

  “I’ll be just outside. Stick your head out of the tent and you can see where I am.”

  “I’m hot.”

  “That’s because you’ve the sheets all wrapped round you, silly.”

  “Cool me off, Elsa.”

  Elsa blows on Alice’s forehead. “I’m going to be right next to you. Now, good night.”

  It feels odd to leave Alice, but what choice does she have? This is merely fulfilling a new duty. Elsa zips the screen shut behind her and slowly, through the thick and heavy sand, makes her way to Edward’s tent. He is seated on a stool in a white nightshirt.

  “Elsa, we are married, after all.”

  “Yes,” she says, trying to sound kind. “We’re husband and wife. I know. But it’s not a habit yet. I’m used to Alice. It has nothing to do with you. With us.”

  She unbuttons her blouse and skirt quickly. “It was quite a grueling day, Edward, wasn’t it? All those crates. I’d stay here forever if only to avoid moving them all again. I hope tomorrow we can relax some.”

  “Tomorrow, I promise you, we will be nothing but tourists. We will explore.”

  “Good,” she says. “I’ve never been a tourist.”

  As she seats herself on the edge of her cot, a silence falls between them. The surf outside roars. Wind ripples the tent. And Elsa can’t help but think that in a moment Kierney will begin hollering from above deck or Eamonn will ask her to cleat a line or Alice will shout to an albatross. But there is only she and Edward, and what, now, do they have to say to each other? There is nothing that needs to be done, no tasks, no tending.

  “Elsa . . . do I . . .frighten you?”

  “Edward, that’s mad.”

  “I realize I am much older than you. I am, well, old. I am surely not what a young woman your age dreams of.”

  At this, Elsa wants to move toward him, wants to kiss him, but is afraid this kindness will be misread. She cannot be with him now; it’s too soon, too strange. “I’ve just been concerned about Alice,” she says. “The rowing off—thatwas frightening. And the trip has been so tiring.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d just like to adjust to this place. To settle in.”

  “Elsa, it is fine. We each have our own cot.”

  “Edward—”

  “The most important thing is to get a proper dosage of good rest.” He rises from the stool and slides himself beneath the loose sheet of his cot. He blows out his lantern.

  “Itis important for us to rejuvenate,” says Elsa.

  His back now turned to her, he whispers: “Don’t forget to stuff some cotton in your ears. They’re sure to have a variety of earwig.”

  “I will, Edward. Good night.”

  As soon as Elsa settles herself on the cot, plugs her ears with cotton, and blows out her own lantern, she tumbles headlong into a swamp of sleep. She dreams, as she will for weeks to follow, that she is still on the boat, gliding through the water. Sleek white seabirds circle overhead as she stares at the endless horizon. When finally she sights land, it is thick with moss and ferns, a slender plume of smoke rising from its center. But as she nears the shore, it vanishes.

  Hours later, Elsa awakens in the pitch dark, in a strange and hollow silence, to a body weighted against hers. She freezes, suppresses a gasp. From her ears she pulls the coils of cotton. Would hereally ? Then a long lock of hair tumbles over her face. Soft, measured breaths fill the tent. Elsa relaxes, eases herself back into slumber. It is only Alice.

  Surveying and photographing consume their first month. The distances are considerable, the terrain rocky, and for transportation they procure three horses in exchange for tobacco. After several days of coaxing—Allie, it’s far simpler than riding a bicycle—Alice is finally persuaded to mount her animal, and together they ride across the island, evading the hundreds of sheep that roam the grassy slopes. They note on their map important distances, landmarks, and the locations of fallen statues. Every few days they ride to the crater lake for fresh water, filling their buckets and basins, hauling them back to the campsite. Once a week they ride ten miles across the island to Hanga Roa, the island’s town, to barter for fruits and vegetables and meat, and to reclaim their belongings.

  Cooking pots, petticoats, soap, tea, twine—every morning a new item is missing from their camp. As they step out of their tents the rising sun reveals on the sand a crate pried open, a bucket upturned, a steamer trunk ransacked. But it isn’t long before they learn the simple method of retrieval: to ask. Riding to town one day, they pass an elderly islander with one of Edward’s neckties knotted around his head like a bandana. When Edward points, the man simply unfastens the tie, hands it back, and rides off. They realize theft, though rampant on the island, is balanced by the frequent, peaceful, and uneventful return of the stolen goods.

  “You see, the island is a closed community,” Edward says over breakfast one morning after another of Elsa’s sun helmets has disappeared. “Thievery, in the traditional sense, completely deprives the owner of his property. But on the island, nothing can really be removed, it can only be transplanted. Ergo:not—actually—theft. Things are merely, shall we say,borrowed without asking. ”

  On the beach they have set up a simple square table where they take meals. For seats they have covered three crates with bedsheets.

  “Well, it isn’t cricket toborrow tea and then go ahead and brew it,” says Elsa, spreading preserves on a biscuit. She doesn’t much care about the tea, but her copy ofThe Voyage of the Beagle is gone and she doesn’t know how to tell Edward. It is bad luck to lose a present, she thinks. Especially a wedding present. Alice’s leather satchel has also vanished.

  “Nolo contendere,” he says. “Edibles do, in fact, defy my hypothesis.”

  From his tone she can tell she has come across as pugnacious. “But it’s a good hypothesis. Such extreme isolation seems to affect societal rules.”

  “Well . . . Elsa,” he continues, cutting into a piece of guava, “we present an unusual situation for them. We could abscond from the island at any moment, take our possessions with us, take theirs, too, if we had the same slippery notion of property. Do not forget: We have the schooner.”

  “Let’s hope it remains that way.” Because of the strength of the current, they have had to move the schooner to the island’s opposite side.

  “Well, there must be a system to these exchanges, or there was before we arrived. I believe we might have opened their system, so to speak. Sent them into a bit of a dither.”

  Dither. Yes. What else, she wonders, should they call it? One of her volumes of Darwin has been stolen by someone who can’t read English. Crates, once emptied, disappear. Women roam Hanga Roa in her hats and petticoats, in Alice’s lace-trimmed jackets; young girls belt their smocks with Edward’s neckties.

  Before long the spirit catches Alice. One morning, she emerges from her tent in a Rapa N
ui white smock.

  “Alice, where did that come from?”

  “I borrowed it. I’m a Rapa Nui.”

  “Allie.”

  “See? I’m Rapa Nui Alice.” And she begins an elaborate pantomime through the sand: She crouches, then pushes back the sleeves of her smock and pretends to pull taro from the ground. She digs a hole, carries invisible stones one by one and places them in her earth oven, then stands and proudly examines her imagined handiwork. How beautiful, thinks Elsa, this ability, this desire to imagine herself as other people. Alice can believe she is Rodney Blackwell or Elsa or anyone. But Elsa wonders if Alice understands the boundaries of herself, where the edges of her being end, and where those of others begin.

  Several days later, when they are in Hanga Roa buying produce, the owner of the smock catches up with them. A pale woman approaches Alice, still in the smock, and taps her on the shoulder. But there seem no hurt feelings. The woman produces Alice’s leather satchel, and the proposed exchange of the goods elicits smiles from both women, as though it is Christmas and each gift a most thoughtful and generous surprise. Flinging off her smock and handing it to the woman, Alice is left in her camisole and bloomers. When the woman sees Alice open the satchel, stroke the soft leather of its sides, then close her eyes and hum, she freezes. With concern she looks to Elsa, then Edward. Finally the woman steps forward and returns the smock to Alice. She lifts Alice’s hand, kisses it, then presses her own palm to Alice’s forehead.

  Alice then begins to laugh, to squirm, and soon the attention of the entire street is on her. A young boy, the boy who snatched the box of tinned meats from Edward’s arms the first night on the boat, watches her in silent amazement.

  At the end of the day, when they mount their horses, weighed down with bags of avocados and guavas and bananas, the same boy follows them on his pony out of the town.

  This is Biscuit Tin.

  The rest of the village takes distinctly less interest in their movements than in their tinned meats and tobacco. But whenever they come to Hanga Roa, this boy follows them from town all the way to Anakena, a silent and curious sentinel. And when finally they arrive at the beach, dismount, and tie their ponies, he sits on the sand and watches them check their equipment, build their fire, prepare their supper. His hair is a dense black meadow of cowlicks, disarrayed and gleaming, as though he has just come from the ocean. His eyes are a shiny brown, his nose broad, and his lips full and supple, so that when he smiles, both rows of bright white teeth are fully exposed. He studies the campsite intently, and with each visit moves closer to the activity, so that after several weeks he is seated against Alice’s tent, gazing at her through the netted door-flap. He watches her carry Pudding’s cage back and forth; he tries to tickle the bird through the bars of its cage. But the boy refuses to speak, refuses even to offer his name. Alice begins calling him Biscuit Tin, for he can be persuaded to return to the village in the evenings only if Alice gives him his choice of biscuits. (To Elsa’s dismay, he places his hand on each one before making up his mind.) But playing with him delights Alice. She has tired of being the source of the fussing. Nowshe can fuss. Gleefully domineering, she repeats all of Elsa’s warnings and cautions to Biscuit Tin:Are you sure you don’t need a jacket, Biscuit Tin? Biscuit Tin, you stay away from the ocean. There are nasty sharks in there. Watch where you step, those rocks are very, very sharp. Like a mother, Elsa thinks as she watches them together. And something in the boy loves Alice’s admonitions. She can grab his thin arm firmly, shake him; she can drag him by the neck of his tattered shirt away from a cliff’s edge, and he beams. Only, he is reticent to touch her, or any of them. He remains at a distance, politely reserved.