“Poki!”Elsa shouts, leaping down from her pony, running to him. “Poki,have you seen Alice? Alice. Where is she?”
Slowly, the boy raises his arm and points toward the water. He does not turn to look at her.
“In the water? Alice is in the water?Vai? Poki! Vai! Alice!” She grabs the boy by the collar, shakes him wildly until she sees that he is crying. She releases her grip, lets his body settle.
“Poki,where is Alice?”
He points again, down to the water, to where the fleet was anchored, to where the supply boat stacked with crates was lashed to the jetty.
Elsa looks out at the ocean, and stumbles back.
26
When Greer returned from the lab, several children were perched beside theresidencial sign, peering through the bushes; they scattered immediately at her approach. Then she heard a wave of voices in the courtyard, the sound of doors slamming, of feet racing along the porch.
“Qué lástima!”It was Mahina’s voice, coming from inside. She sounded distressed.“Qué lástima.”
Greer had never seen the main room so crowded. At the far end, the two wicker wing chairs had been pushed together and Isabel lay across them in her khaki shorts and Sven’s soiled shirt. Her long hair was matted, her makeup faded. She was sharing a cigarette with Sven, who held her hand. Across from them, a uniformed carabinero was at Mahina’s desk, his olive beret resting before him, and he was writing in a notebook. He was young, with a thick curled mustache that looked fake amid his delicate features. Luka Tepano sat on the floor in the corner, his knees held to his chest. He seemed entirely disengaged from the commotion. Mahina was moving between them all, offering reassurances, except to the carabinero, whose appropriation of her desk she clearly found insulting.
“Doctora!”Mahina had just seen her.
“What happened?”
“Can you get us a drink of something strong?” Sven called.
“In the kitchen,” said Mahina, who was keeping her eye on the carabinero.“You get the pisco.”
Greer quickly went to the kitchen, searched the pantry for the bottle, and brought it back to the lobby.
After Isabel and Sven had each taken a long drink, the carabinero stopped writing.“Su historia, Señor Urstedt, lentamente.” He then turned to Mahina and told her to translate.
Mahina winced at this order, but clearly felt the gravity of the situation outweighed her distaste for Chilean authority.“Sí,” she said, disappearing through the beaded curtain. She returned with a chair and seated herself across from the carabinero.
Sven sat on the floor beside Isabel, set the bottle of pisco down, and ran his free hand through his hair. “As I tried to say before, we got the horses from Chico and set out to explore the coast. About halfway to Anakena it begins to cloud over, so we get off the path and look for a cave. We find an opening in the rock face. We have our backpacks with our lunch, so we figure we’ll avoid the rain and have our sandwiches there. One thing leads to another, we start . . .” At this Sven’s eyes floated up to Isabel, who blushed. “Anyway, then something scurries toward us, like it came from the outside. Isabel leaps up because she’s sure it’s a rodent. Then, again, something moves in the darkness and I start feeling around on the ground. Well, it turns out to be a rock. This is good because it’s not a rodent, bad because who the hell is throwing stones at us. We hear somebody whistling and then comes another stone. So we get dressed, grab our packs, and head for the light. And at the entrance I see poor old Luka Tepano holding one of his plates. And then I realize where we are. ‘Luka, I’m sorry,’ I tell him, ‘we didn’t know this was her cave.’ But Luka just sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles. He starts to look very upset, so I ask him what’s the matter but he just keeps looking at the cave. Then Isabel starts to feel uneasy about the whole thing, keeps asking me what’s wrong with him. I ask Luka if he wants me to go in there with him but he just keeps staring at the cave. So I take him by the arm, but he won’t budge. I don’t think he’d ever entered. So I told him to wait there, and I got my flashlight and headed in alone.”
Mahina translated this last phrase, the carabinero copied it in his notebook, and an awkward silence followed.
“Y después?”asked the carabinero.
Isabel shook her head. Sven looked over at Luka, “That’s all. Then I came out and told him she wasmuerte . I sent Isabel to fetch you.”
Mahina translated; the carabinero surveyed the room and said,“Bueno.” When finally he made his way out, Mahina closed the door firmly behind him and resumed her seat behind the desk.
“I can’t believe you found the old woman,” said Greer. “God, I’m so sorry.”
“Well, it was worse having to tell him,” said Sven. “I looked him in the eye and said,‘Muerte, Luka.’Isabel tried to apologize to him. But the poor old guy didn’t seem to hear anything we said. He just sat down on a rock beside the cave, I don’t know, like he was never going to move.”
After the carabinero had left, Greer stayed in the main room while Mahina passed around glasses of guava juice. Ramon had joined them. Luka had fallen asleep in the corner, and Mahina had removed his shoes and draped a blanket over him. It was a relief to see him embrace sleep so completely, but nobody knew what they could do for him when he woke up. Other than the woman in the cave, he didn’t seem to have family. Greer still hadn’t thanked him for finding her, for getting Vicente, and now she wished she’d done so before all this happened. And she had wanted to ask him about the nut fossil too. She wanted to know if he had seen it in her hand when he found her. She still had no recollection of picking it up. She’d been searching for a fossil, as the only evidence to prove what species of tree had really grown on the island. It was simply too extraordinary to have the final piece of evidence appear that way—a gift from an unseen hand. It was like waking to discover the Rosetta stone on your pillow.
“I feel like such a jerk,” whispered Sven. He had been repeating this over and over. “I know I teased him. I didn’t mean him any harm. But I would never have knowingly gone into her cave.”
“Nobody thinks it’s your fault,” said Isabel. “Or our fault. It was just an awful mistake.”
“She was very old,” said Mahina. “For years she was there. Hiding. And she died peacefully. A good death. You should not be upset.”
Just then, the door swung open, and Vicente entered. Mahina lifted a finger to her lips and gestured toward Luka.
“Where’ve you been?” Greer whispered, embarrassed at the urgency in her tone. She had gotten used to him being around, had come to take his presence for granted.
“I’ve just heard. For a geologist”—he turned to Sven—“you have a very poor instinct for rock formations.”
“I’d seen him a million times going and coming. Never there.”
“Well, the doctor has said her heart was weak. She was old.” Vicente lowered himself to the floor and leaned against the wall, threw his legs out in front of him. He looked toward Luka.
“I am sorry for him,” he said. “It must be so terrible to lose her. I suppose this was not meant to be a good day. For anyone.”
Vicente reached into his breast pocket and extracted an envelope. He handed it to Greer.
“Oh, no,” said Greer. “Your telegram.” She pulled out the thin sheet of paper.
Forever in your debt. Will unload at F. and send officer with instructions and funds for return to E. I have trust in your vigilance. May God watch over us all.
Vicente said, his voice flat, “This message was sent to an Alfred Heidegzeller, a German expatriate living in the Falkland Islands. He had grown up in Strasbourg with von Spee. A famous yachtsman who had turned down many offers to serve in the navy.”
“He got the tablets?”
“This was dispatched November fifteenth, routed through two German merchant vessels so that it could not be detected by the Allies, and arrived at the home of Heidegzeller November twenty-eighth. He never got the cargo.”
“The battle,” said Sven.
“The Falklands,” said Greer.
“Every German ship went down. They were never able to anchor.”
“And the tablets? Went down with them?”
“That is the last that is known of his cargo. It was the last personal dispatch von Spee sent.”
“I’m sorry, Vicente.”
He took the telegram from her, folded it neatly into an airplane, and sent it sailing across the room. It was the first time Greer had seen Vicente defeated.
It was growing dark. Mahina switched on a desk lamp and the light refracted through the hanging globes, casting a row of webbed green moons on the wall. They finished the last of their juice in a silence broken only by Luka Tepano’s occasional snores. The telegram, the woman’s death, Burke-Jones’s departure. It was a somber day.
“It is time for bed,” Mahina finally announced. “I will stay with Luka. He must sleep. We leave him in quiet. And everybody else, go now.”
“Mahina, you remind me of my first girlfriend,” said Sven. “Heidi Larsen. Very regimented. ‘Pick me up. Six o’clock.’ ”
While he spoke, Mahina turned off the lights and opened the front door. “Iorana,Señor Urstedt.”
Sven took Isabel by the hand and led her out. “Don’t worry, Mahina. I loved her madly. Good night, Greer.” Vicente and Ramon followed him outside.
“Too many jokes, that Señor Ursedt,” said Mahina, shaking her head. Greer decided to linger for a few minutes, helping Mahina carry the dirty glasses to the kitchen. When they tiptoed back into the main room to quietly right the chairs, there was a soft knock at the door. It was Sven with a bundle in his arms.
“Some clean clothes,” he said to Mahina. “For the old man when he wakes up.”
Mahina kissed him on the cheek.“Buen muchacho.”
The next morning when Greer awoke she found Isabel in the dining room, in a pink robe, sipping tea.
“The man left,” said Isabel. “Luka. He must have wandered off in the middle of the night.”
“Where is Mahina?”
“She said to tell you the boat is here.”
Greer strolled over to thecaleta to find the Chilean Company boat anchored in the bay. Hundreds of islanders were milling about the docks, watching, as the first few crates were unloaded. Since it was too crowded to find Mahina, Greer returned to theresidencial, where all day long, through the windows of the main room, came the sounds of laughter and gasps as people examined each other’s merchandise in the street. Supplies on the island that had been diminishing—flour, sugar, tea—were now replenished. Gasoline arrived in drums, enough for a year. There were surprises too. As the boat was unloaded, Mahina popped in with regular updates: two new Jeeps, twenty chairs for the schoolhouse, a new mattress for the governor’s bed, which caused no end of discussion about what he had done to wear out the first one. And materials—tiles, panes of glass, two-by-fours, brackets and braces and screws—for anyone who meant to build a house. And then there were the crates of pisco, the cans of peaches, the tires, which Ramon needed for his Jeep.
“Ramon has just put the tires on!” Mahina announced from the threshold of Greer’s room. “And now I think I know what will be good for thedoctora .”
“Please tell me it doesn’t involveamor .”
“Amor, amor. No. A ride in the Jeep! Thedoctora needs Terevaka. Thedoctora can drive, no?”
Greer rummaged through her duffel for her blue jeans, and pulled them on beneath her caftan. Mahina turned to the door, and Greer smiled to herself—Mahina had tended her fever, wiped vomit from her face, led her to the bathroom during her delirium, but had to turn away while Greer changed clothes. Endless courtesy, thought Greer. She stepped into her sandals, tied a sweater around her waist. “Keys?”
The drive was rugged. As they bounced and bucked, Mahina held her seat, and Greer did her best not to stall, or hit any dips. She felt that Mahina viewed her not only as a woman who could drive but as an expert driver, adoctora of driving, and Greer didn’t want to disappoint. She tried to look confident. Before they left, she’d made a great show of adjusting the rear- and sideview mirrors, only to find now that with each bump the mirrors shifted. It made no difference, though—there was nothing behind or beside them. They were the only two on the grassy mountain.
It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the Jeep’s new tires kicked up dust. To keep from coughing, they had tied bandanas around their mouths.
When the Jeep finally reached the top, the sun appeared to hang directly before them. Mahina untied her bandana, flung open the door. “Come,Doctora .”
Somehow, arriving at the top lacked the grandeur Greer had expected. Terevaka was a grassy hill like all others on the island, only it was the highest.
“Look.” Mahina pointed at the sea below them. She spun slowly in a circle. “Horizon. All around.”
It was true; for an entire three hundred and sixty degrees, Greer could see the hazy line of ocean meeting sky. This, then, was the grandeur. Other sights were of things: monuments, snowcapped mountains. This view was one of absence: a horizon unblemished.
Greer sat down in the grass and tried to absorb the feeling of vast space. “This was worth the wait,” she said.
“Andmira. ” Mahina was beside her, facing the sun, her legs tucked beneath her skirt. She’d taken off her shoes. “The horizon is not a line.” Her hand cut a half-circle through the air. “But round.”
“The earth’s curvature,” said Greer, overwhelmed. All that lay around them was the endless ocean.Te Pito O Te Henua —“navel of the earth.” The name given to the island by the first settlers made sense.
The sun streamed through the clouds in bands of lavender, pink, and opaline. On the water below, the light lay like tinsel.
“How far do you think,Doctora ? How far you see the water? They say it is fifty miles, at least.”
“It all depends on how high we are.”
“Five hundred meters above the sea.”
The numbers sounded right. Greer had always liked the horizon equation. All a person had to do was imagine standing at one vertex of a triangle. If you knew how high you were above the earth’s surface, with a little help from Pythagoras, you could calculate your distance to the horizon. Now she imagined everybody as points on billions of separate triangles, all extending upward from a common vertex, the center of the earth.
“Sounds about right,” said Greer. “So if a ship were to appear on the horizon right now, it would be fifty miles away.”
“Fifty,” said Mahina. “But it looks like hundreds to me. I sit here many times and try to count each mile.”
Greer remembered Mahina’s husband and wondered if this was where she came to watch for him.
“You spend a lot of time alone, don’t you?” asked Greer. “I mean, when you don’t have guests who follow you around all the time and make you nurse them in bed for days?”
“There is nothing wrong with being alone,” said Mahina.
Greer, sensing Mahina’s reticence, leaned back on her elbows and let her hair sweep the grass. “Well, this is nothing like Massachusetts or Wisconsin. This is nothing like anyplace I’ve ever been.”
“You have traveled much,Doctora ?”
“Yes,” said Greer. “But for short trips. Taking my samples and then leaving. Always looking at pieces of earth, segments of land, but never feeling the place. I never realized before I got here that land itself has a character.” Greer’s hand stroked the ground beside her. “This island, it’s a gentle place.”
They sat silently as the sun fell further in the sky and the air began to cool. A full moon, paper white, emerged behind them. Mahina’s hands were held together, her palms churning, as her mind seemed to run through some memory. Then she stood abruptly, straightened her skirt, and headed for the Jeep. “We go,Doctora .”
“Mahina, are you all right?”
“Yes, yes. We get back before dark.”
“Hey, I have an idea. Why
don’t you drive us back? Or partway back? Or just for a minute?” Greer shook the key in the air.
“Very well,” said Mahina.
“But slowly.” Greer settled into the passenger seat and retrieved their bandanas from the glove compartment. They tied them on. “Okay,” she said, “go.”
Mahina turned the key and the Jeep coughed to life. She stared at the gearshift a moment, then carefully wrapped her hand around it. Her foot pushed hard on the accelerator. The Jeep bucked, but soon steadied. Focused intently on the terrain ahead, Mahina leaned into the windshield. She snaked the Jeep down the hill, crossing their former tracks, until they reached a sharp dip, and Mahina swerved right, then left, shifting the gear but forgetting to depress the clutch. The gears moaned.
“Wait, Mahina,” Greer said, but Mahina had already brought the Jeep to an abrupt stop. The Jeep’s engine rumbled.
“I think we missed the ditch,” said Greer. “Let’s put it in neutral for a second and I’ll check the front.”
But Mahina said nothing, did nothing.
“Mahina?”
Greer saw that her thick eyelashes were collecting tears.
“Mahina.” She’d never seen Mahina unhappy. She placed her hand on Mahina’s shoulder, a gesture she’d seen Mahina perform many times. “What’s wrong?”
Mahina released a jagged breath. Her fist thumped the dashboard.
“What is it?”
“It is the Jeep, of course.” Her voice was weary. “It is that I cannot learn to drive.”
But Greer knew it had nothing to do with driving, with the Jeep, with her. Mahina was lost in a private sadness. And it was clear she didn’t want to be comforted. Mahina’s benevolence was infinite, but her intimacy had borders. So Greer had to pretend—she could perform that kindness.
“Terevaka isn’t easy driving,” said Greer. “I barely got us up here myself.”
Mahina looked around them. She untied her bandana and dropped it in her lap. “I am stuck,” she said.
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