Easter Island

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  Edward reaches across and grabs her shoulders. “Stop it, Elsa. Stop.”

  Elsa wrenches free, but then slumps lifelessly over the table. She has exhausted everything inside herself.

  A tear rolls down the sharp line of Edward’s cheek, catching at the top of his beard. He shakes his head as though to disperse it, but this only releases another. “Do you want me to be ashamed? I assure you that nothing you say to me can be worse than what I’ve said to myself.” He looks down at the table. “I will not protest any accusations you make against me. But don’t do this. Not to Alice. You love her, Elsa. I’ve never for a moment doubted that. But”—he looks up and seeks her eyes—“I don’t think you fully understand her.”

  “I don’t understandyou .”

  “What would you like me to say? All I can tell you is that this is real. No argument, no explanation, can make it go away. Alice is furious with you, because of what you have and she doesn’t.”

  Alice, in love with him. “No,” she says.

  “Perhaps you’ve loved her too much to let yourself imagine what she really feels, to imagine her pain.”

  Elsa rubs the scratch on her neck, and the salt of her fingers awakens the wound.

  “Elsa, I want you to know that I’ve been firm with her. I’ve told her that I cannot be like a husband to her. But when I tell her, she says she hates you. Of course she doesn’t mean that, but she has a strong sense of what she’s missing. She wants the things you want, wants to have the things you have. Elsa, you’ve known her since she was a child, and you think of her as a child, but she isn’t a child. Part of her is a woman. A very despondent woman.”

  “Woman?I think youhave let desire deceive you.”

  “You say she understands more than it seems, youknow she understands, and yet you refuse to consider the fact she may actually understand something of her own deficiencies. Alice knows she’s different. No amount of encouragement or kindness or love will prevent her from recognizing what she has been denied.”

  “Denied?”

  “That’s not an accusation.”

  “What is it, then? Since the day she was born, and I do mean that literally, she has been loved, and cared for, and watched over, and entertained—”

  “Don’t you see? You think of her needs only in terms of the onesyou can tend to. You believe that her happiness, her health, and her well-being are completely dependent on you. I know the sacrifices you’ve made for her. You could make all the right choices, make endless sacrifices, but, Elsa, no person can provide contentment or safety to another the way you want to believe you can. Especially to Alice. She will always have longings and sadnesses you cannot remedy. You let the boy love her. Biscuit Tin. While you have a husband, a man you—”

  “Allie loves Biscuit Tin,” says Elsa, though she knows this is not his point.

  “She wanted to be in the tent with us. She wants a companion.”

  “Alice. In love with you. With anybody. And jealous of me. After everything, she hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “I did this,” Elsa says, gesturing to Edward, to the island, “for her.”

  “I know,” Edward answers without anger. “And . . . I thinkshe knows.”

  Elsa refuses to believe this. It is too much.

  “I do love you, Elsa, no matter what you may feel for me.”

  She wants to say something kind, something to make him feel better, but she can’t find the energy. She doesn’t know what she feels for him.

  “I can’t stay in the tent with you,” says Elsa.

  “Elsa, you have been a good companion.”

  It is on the tip of her tongue to say she has been aconvenient companion, but she looks at his swollen eyes, and restrains herself. The venom of what she’s already said rises in her throat.

  They sit in silence, the echoes of their conversation hovering above them. Elsa finally stands and wanders up to the rise above their camp. She lies down in the rough grass, listening to waves lap at the shore below. She closes her eyes and tries to picture herself before she came to the island, before she married Edward, before her father died. What was she like? Was she really kind to Alice? Images flood her mind: cycling in the afternoon through St. Albans, sitting in Dr. Chapple’s office, walking together through Hyde Park in the rain, their kiss in the dark. Did she understand Alice? And Alice—was she happier before Elsa became her guardian?Guardian. The word roams her mind, her memory. A breeze, carrying the chill of descending night, sweeps across her face. Slowly, the sky darkens, blackness seeping like tar to the edges of the horizon.

  “Elsa!”

  It is the following morning, and Elsa is lying, once again, atop the hill. She knows Kasimiro is awaiting her return, but she is too fatigued to budge. It feels like months since she was at the leper colony, excited simply by the translation of one small tablet. How happy she was, riding back along the coast, thekohau in her lap. But it now seems impossible another translation could give her such pleasure, that anything could. She cannot bring herself to go down to the camp again and see Alice, not yet.

  “Elsa!” Edward calls from below. She can hear his boots clambering up the hill, can hear him panting.

  “I just need to lie here.” But she only whispers this to herself, shutting her eyes. The symbols of therongorongo float before her, clouds forming and dissolving.

  “Elsa.” His voice is directly above her.

  “Please. I’ll be down soon. I just want to be alone a little longer.”

  “You must get up.”

  “Edward—”

  “Just tell me I’m not mad. You must see this.”

  Begrudgingly, she opens her eyes. The symbols vanish, replaced by the gray sky, the grass. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t care what color tern Edward has sighted, what marking he has found on amoai. She doesn’t care about his apologies or regrets. She simply needs solitude, but she hasn’t the strength to fight him. Edward’s face, crooked with bewilderment, hangs above her.

  “I must be going completely insane,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “Elsa, please. Sit up.”

  Elsa sighs. “All right. What?”

  “Just tell me. Please. Doyou see that?” Edward points toward the water.

  She props herself up on her elbows and looks down at the sea. What appears to be a fleet of warships is steaming toward the island.

  20

  The Sociedad de Arqueología de América del Sur had sent word that a small conference would be held on the island in October in which the four researchers would present their work to one another and to any islanders or tourists who wished to attend. To coordinate this, SAAS had sent Isabel Nosticio, a humorless but seductive middle-aged Argentinean woman with thick black hair to her waist, who always wore pink and an abundance of makeup. At the end of any conversation, about overhead projectors or hors d’oeuvres, she would reapply her lipstick. “Remember,” she would say, sliding her glossy lips together, “it is in the interest of the island community that we work.” Her main task was to make sure the eccentric researchers roaming the SAAS halls came through in the end, making the Sociedad appear efficient, charitable, and, ultimately, pro–Rapa Nui. In the wake of a Rapa Nui petition to Chile demanding land rights outside Hanga Roa, the conference, it quickly became clear, was meant as an appeasement.

  Mahina was not impressed. “They ask you to tell us of your work, the work they decide for the island, so that we not complain of their government.Pasto! ”

  Greer was having breakfast in the dining room.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She sipped her tea and turned to Mahina, seated at the next table, drinking a tall glass of apricot nectar. Every morning they ate together at sunrise, as Greer was the first to wake of all the guests. Mahina would gather eggs from the yard, pluck fruit from the trees. Then Greer would hear the crackle of eggshells from the kitchen, the rhythmic thump of the knife as a guava was quartered. Greer couldn’t help but thin
k that Mahina would have made an excellent scientist. Precision and procedure governed her life.

  “It is our island,” said Mahina, who, out of some strict sense of professional boundaries, always refused to sit at Greer’s table. So they spoke across the space between them like solo travelers. Over the past few months, Greer had learned that Mahina started theresidencial six years earlier, when the Lan Chile flights began. Before that she had been a schoolteacher, making sure the island’s children learned the Rapa Nui language; sometimes, on the street, if they were out walking together, a teenager would approach Mahina with great deference, and Greer could tell the person was a former student. Mahina, she was sure, had been a demanding but inspiring teacher. Her knowledge of the island’s folklore was encyclopedic, and she took her responsibility as a storehouse of history seriously; she made Greer write down the legends she recited, then read them back for verification. Over the past few weeks, roused by late-arriving news of the military coup in Chile, they had spoken often of politics, concerned about the new regime’s effect on the island. Greer’s sympathy for Rapa Nui’s predicament increased daily, but she knew little could be done. Chile, no matter who held office, was too large and powerful, Rapa Nui too small to exist on its own. The annual supply ship collected wool from the island’s Chilean sheep ranch. If Chile had no wool to collect, why send the boat? Who, then, would bring supplies—cement and furniture and food? Still, their conversations were not about pragmatism but political idealism and the right to live freely. To speak of the logistics, Greer thought, would seem offensive.

  “It’s an injustice,” said Greer.

  “You do not have these problems,” said Mahina. “In America.”

  “Oh, we do,” said Greer, slicing into her omelet. “Plenty. Long ago, we fought the British for independence. That was cut-and-dry at least. Now we have more complicated problems. The funny thing is, in the U.S., the wordrevolutionary has such a negative connotation. But we were revolutionaries.”

  “Con-no-ta-tion?”

  “A hint. A suggestion.”

  “A clue?”

  “Sort of,” said Greer. Mahina wrote the word on the notepad beside her—each morning they exchanged vocabulary: English for Rapa Nui, Rapa Nui for English.

  “Con-no-ta-tion,” Greer enunciated. “It’s a nice word. But I promise, you could travel across the whole U.S. and never have to use it.”

  “I would like to travel!” said Mahina, suddenly animated. “I would like to have money to go somewhere. People come here now from all over. Germany, Australia, and New Jersey. I am lucky to meet so many different people. I am”—Mahina looked to Greer and pronounced, slowly, one of her new vocabulary words—“privileged.” Greer nodded. “God is good to me. But still I would like to go somewhere.”

  “What about Santiago? Could you go there?”

  “It is the money,” Mahina said. “I have the old English books. I could sell them, yes?”

  “Depends on what they are. There’s a market for old books. I could try to find a dealer in the States.”

  “Yes, but of course I cannot leave. I must wait for Raphael to come back.”

  “Raphael?”

  “My husband.”

  “Husband!” In the five months Greer had been there, this was the first Mahina had mentioned a husband. “When on earth did you get married?”

  “Oh,treinta y cinco . . .”

  “Thirty-five?”

  “Thirty-five years ago. Saturday.”

  “But where is he?”

  “Tahiti.”

  “Will he be back for your anniversary?”

  “I hope so,” she said, nodding forcefully. “He said if Tahiti was as lovely as we heard, he would come back and bring me too.”

  “He’s your exploring party.”

  “Sí, sí,” she said, looking out the window. The sun lit her face and she let her eyes drift closed.

  “But theresidencial ? Your home? You’d give it up for Tahiti?”

  Mahina shrugged, opened her eyes. “No more talk of him.” She piled her fork and knife on her empty plate, swiped her napkin across the tablecloth.

  “I have to tell you,” Greer said, “I think Ramon has a thing for you. A crush.”

  “Crush?”

  “Romantic interest. Love interest. He watches you all the time.”

  Mahina shook her head. “Ramon is the brother of my husband.”

  “That doesn’t mean he can’t think of you that way.”

  “Ramon?”

  “Yes, Ramon. Haven’t you noticed?”

  Mahina gave a quickhmph. “And you,Doctora ? You have a crush as well, I think.Amor for thedoctora , no?”

  “Me?”

  “Me? Thedoctora would like to be so innocent! Vicente,Doctora ! He is always leaving books, a note, a thing for you.”

  “He’s just a colleague. He’s trying to be helpful.”

  “You are not married. What is wrong? You do not like him? He is too short, you think?” Mahina shrugged. “The Chilean men are tiny, it is true. Not like the Rapa Nui men.”

  “No, Mahina, he’s not too short.” He was taller than Mahina, and taller than Greer. But Greer laughed, amused by the suggestion that after months of examining her feelings for Vicente, talking herself out of attraction, it might come down to something so simple, so definable: his height. “I was married, though.”

  Mahina tilted her head. “Your husband? He left you?”

  “He died,” said Greer. “He died ten months ago. From a heart attack.”

  “Oh, my deardoctora. ” Mahina rose from her chair and moved behind Greer. “So sad.” Shifting Greer’s hair to one side of her neck, she rubbed Greer’s shoulders, then rested her chin on Greer’s head. The sweet smell of gardenia washed over Greer, and she felt her eyes drift closed. She hadn’t expected to be comforted by this—her admission, the warmth of Mahina’s sympathy, by simple touch.

  “Thank you,” said Greer.

  “Doctora,” said Mahina. “Never feel alone.”

  What Mahina had said about Vicente was true—he did come by often, with books and journals and articles. He’d supplied Greer with all the reading material she could possibly need. At the weekly dinners, or in passing at the lab, he updated her on hisrongorongo work and his investigations into the Germans. By now she even knew his daily routines. In the morning he did sit-ups and push-ups on the coast; on the nights the Lan Chile flight arrived, he read the newspaper by thecaleta with Mario and Petero, exchanging finished pages one at a time, all of them sharing a bottle of pisco. Greer in fact knew everybody’s routine. Ramon tended to his garden after tea each morning; he took great pleasure in trimming his avocado and guava trees, in pinching the withered blooms from his flower garden and slowly pacing his rows of manioc bushes. As Greer passed the Espíritu, Sven could be heard singing in the shower. The island had a small-town intimacy. After five months, people knew where Greer went, and when. Twice a week she bought groceries from Mario, the red-haired man she’d met her first day. Once a week she went to thecorreo to post research requests. She found comfort in these rhythms, in the intricate web of greetings that underlay her daily lab work.

  At night, after dinner at theresidencial, Greer would sometimes gather with the other guests to listen to Mahina’s island stories, or to offer advice on sight-seeing routes. But usually, she went back to her room, took a long shower, and climbed into bed with a book. She was now rereading Captain Cook’s log. He had anchored off the coast in 1774, about fifty years after Roggeveen:

  . . . As the master drew near the shore with the boat, one of the natives swam off to her, and insisted on coming aboard the ship, where he remained two nights and a day. The first thing he did after coming aboard was to measure the length of the ship, by fathoming her from taffrail to the stern; and as he counted the fathoms, we observed that he called the numbers by the same names that they do at Otaheite; nevertheless, his language was in a manner wholly unintelligible to all of us. . . .

&
nbsp; Before I sailed from England I was informed that a Spanish ship had visited this isle in 1769. Some signs of it were seen among the people now about us; one man had a pretty good broad-brimmed European hat on, another had a Grego jacket, and another a red silk handkerchief.

  Greer set the book down and watched the curtain billow in a breeze. She looked at the wicker nightstand, the mahogany desk, the plaque of the Virgin Mary hanging above her. It wasn’t just the ecosystem; objects as well suffered from the island’s isolation. Things didn’t disappear, they changed hands. Everything in her room would remain on the island. That red silk handkerchief and the Grego jacket, she thought, were probably in the back of someone’s closet.

  They also seemed to know the use of a musket, and to stand in much awe of it. But this they probably learnt from Roggeveen, who, if we are to believe the authors of that voyage, left them sufficient tokens.

  . . . The greatest part of the distance across the ground had but a barren appearance, being a dry hard clay, and everywhere covered with stones . . .

  On the east side, near the sea . . . three platforms of stone-work, or rather the ruins of them. On each had stood four of those large statues; but they were all fallen down from two of them, and also one from the third; all except one were broken by the fall and in some measure defaced . . .

  Greer had already noted this: Most of themoai had been toppled by 1774. Yet Roggeveen had seen them standing. So the statues must have fallen between Roggeveen’s and Cook’s visits, 1722 to 1774. If a natural disaster brought down themoai, it wasn’t the same one that wiped out the biota, for even Roggeveen noted barrenness. So what had actually toppled them? A disaster with that kind of force would surely have entered the island’s oral history, but there was no such record. Had the islanders themselves done this? After ages of carving and construction and moving? Throughout history monuments were destroyed—churches burned, idols smashed, portraits defaced—but as acts of violence inflicted by an enemy, an invader, a new regime. The Europeans hadn’t touched themoai . Mahina had spoken of two vying tribes on the island—the long-ears and the short-ears. Could one have vanquished the other? Even so, why destroy the island’s greatest achievements? Western investigators speculated endlessly about the building of themoai, amazed a primitive people could erect and transport such magnificent idols. But how could a people, any people, allow them to fall? This was the more interesting question. Greer continued: