Maiden Voyage

by Tania Aebi

  There was no word from my father during these months. He must have been crazy with worry, once again desperately trying to figure out where we were. I wrote letters to him, hoping to sneak them out to a mailbox, but they were always intercepted en route by one of the tantes and sent to my mother instead.

  My mother had no friends other than the Intaglias, who refused to be of any help to my father, and she had precious few acquaintances, so he was left to unravel the mystery of our whereabouts by himself. It wasn’t until she filed for a divorce in Switzerland and he was served the papers in New York that he was able to find us. One day, he arrived on our doorstep.

  The tantes listened to my father’s side of the story, they let him see us and, when we went out of our minds with joy at the sight of him, they were moved by the sincerity of the reunion. How could this be the same monster described by my mother? Over the months, they admitted later, they had come to doubt her stories, having witnessed firsthand her erratic behavior. Before now, they had been in no position to do anything about it.

  According to American law, my mother had kidnapped us and my father automatically had a legal right to our custody. But we were in Switzerland and out of American jurisdiction; my father’s hands were tied and there was nothing he could do about it. She had applied for a divorce under our Swiss citizenship. This was her last chance and she was going to make the most of it.

  In Switzerland, unless it can be proven that a mother is completely unfit to care for her children, or that she is a raving maniac, she will always get custody. My mother had assembled a group of highly respected lawyers and religious people for her defense. Although none had met us or my father, a perverted enough picture of him had been painted to make any normal person shudder. The courts made the Château our legal guardians until the case was settled.

  On the day of the trial, the last person my mother expected to see was my father, and he walked into the courtroom, prepared with all the evidence needed to prove that his wife was mentally incompetent. After the accusations and evidence were all out on the table, the judge decided in his favor. Confident that he would win on the point of doubtful mental fitness, my father had also foreseen that my mother would immediately appeal the judge’s decision, which would cement the whole case back into the Swiss legal system for God only knew how long. He was ready. He knew that it would take about forty-five minutes to file the appeal. For forty-five minutes, he would have legal custody and the right to take us out of the school.

  That morning, there was an air of suspense around the Château. We knew that exciting things were happening, and before he left for the courthouse, my father had sworn us to secrecy about how the day would unfold. The tantes helped pack our belongings, our Uncle Peter arrived from Appenzell to help, and at the appointed hour we sped to a rendezvous in the forest and jumped into my father’s car. The two brothers hugged each other goodbye, and we zoomed off across the border, through France and on to Luxembourg to catch an IcelandAir flight bound for New York and a new life. It would be two years before we would see or hear from my mother again. She never even had a chance to say goodbye.

  • • •

  Seven years later, as I sat on my mother’s deathbed, goodbye was a sentiment with which I had become very familiar. For two weeks, I tried to devote myself to her needs and pack as much kindness as possible into the short time we had left. Mostly, she just wanted me to listen. I was with her every day, visiting, helping her to eat, bringing her little goodies. The pictures and maps of Varuna’s progress seemed to capture her imagination more than anything else, and she made me put them up on the walls around her bed. She never complained and rarely cried out, unless it was in between the torpors induced by the painkillers administered by her nurse.

  The one thing I hoped for during every visit over that Christmas holiday was that she would finally reveal to us the secrets of her past. I listened carefully as her stories rambled; I tried to read between the lines as she talked in confused riddles, but still the solution to the puzzle remained incomplete and, it seemed now, was about to die with her.

  Christmas day was a bittersweet affair that came and went, signaling that the time to go back to Tahiti had arrived. I thought of my father with his Land-Rover, off somewhere in Africa, trying in his own way to avoid the painful realities of home, and felt bad for Tony and Jade. Nina and I would be leaving them alone with my mother, and Jeri and Christian, and they were only sixteen and fifteen years old.

  I watched my mother’s strength ebb, and on my last evening with her forever, I sat listening, stroking her hair and etching her beautiful face in my memory. Snow whirled around outside the window and the colorful lights and decorations of her final Christmas season twinkled on the streets of the city. I clicked in the cassette of her favorite song, “Memory,” which I had first played for her two years earlier in Switzerland. She had insisted that I play it for her every day of that visit. As the music rose to the crescendo, her eyes were pools of tears struggling against sleep.

  “Mommy,” I said quietly. “It’s time to sleep now. I promise I’ll call you every other day. And don’t forget that I love you, OK?”

  “Goodbye, my daughter. Remember, learn as much as you can on your voyage.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “Tania,” she said, and I leaned closer, “don’t come back. Stay free from those who will hurt you. On the ocean you will always be free. You will see that Nature is the only fair one. Never forget that your mommy loves you more than anything in the world.” She could stay awake no longer and I gazed at her for the last time.

  Sitting by her bedside, holding her thin hand in mine, I saw returning to my mother’s sleeping face the gentleness of simpler times, now long gone by. I remembered the time in Vernon, when we were children, Tony, Nina and I incubated a quail egg, and when the furry brown bird hatched, she always favored my mother, flying to her shoulder and fluttering freely around the house. Cinderella we called her, and for a year, her songs brought a spark of joy to the day. One afternoon, we came home from school and found my mother crying. She sat down with us and said that Cinderella had broken her neck against the window glass and was dead.

  “She was too delicate for this world, children. She saw the beautiful trees and the sky and the other little birds and she longed to be with them. Now I know she is happy. She is flying in freedom in heaven. She is where she belongs.”

  My mother’s moments of gentleness were like drops of water to parched throats and, if I tried, I thought that I could remember each one. I remembered how much she used to love to knit and crochet, and the little dolls and doilies she often made for us, and how she painstakingly guided my fingers to create my first scarf. Sometimes she even made our clothes.

  When she first returned from the sanitarium, she had pulled out of a bag the sweater that she had started knitting nine years before for my father. “I started this when you were babies. It’s about time I finished it, don’t you think?” she said, smiling whenever one of us would sit with her and watch her needles click away. She had filled us with hope in those days. I remembered the night she surprised my father with the sweater, made in a large green fisherman knit. He put it on and, it seemed, never took it off. “This is my favorite sweater,” he would always say. He still wears it.

  When we were at the boarding school in Switzerland, she often wrote us beautiful letters trying to explain her motives, reminding us that she was only acting out of love. One letter I still have, its words thinly veiling the troubled soul that penned them: “Behind the clouds of our sorrow, my daughter, believe that the sun still shines. Soon, the wind will come and whisk away the cloud forever. Tania, who does not walk heavily through dark moments? Who does not weep alone because of an inexpressible sorrow? Nobody knows the trouble your mommy sees. Sometimes, for moments, I feel that I am out of God’s presence and everything is in a strange mist. But I must learn to creep along, like a boat in fog. Sometimes, I think that to hear noise would be better than the strange silen
ce that I hear. God is the only friend who will never betray us. He has a plan for us and nothing can stop it. My dear, always be a good team with Nina, Tony and Jade, and remember, no matter what, nobody will take away from you your Mommy’s love. I have written this letter with my heart to you, my dear child and friend.”

  • • •

  As I lay on a bench in the Tahitian airport, homesickness chewed away at my stomach. I had already been stretching things by leaving Varuna alone in a crowded harbor for two weeks, but it seemed just as wrong to be on the other side of the world when so much was still happening at home. Thinking of the million and one questions that I still wanted to ask, I longed to talk more with my mother, tell her again that she had my love. The loudspeaker announced another incoming flight and I went to the bathroom to wash my face. Walking back to my seat, I saw Luc waiting at the arrival gate.

  “Hello! Welcome back. How are things at home?” he asked, but I couldn’t trust myself to form the answer to even so simple a question without crying and just shrugged my shoulders. I looked at him expectantly, half hoping, but he shook his head. “They’re here, and she knows,” he said. And, before I could say anything, “I’m so sorry, Tania, but this isn’t easy for any of us. Please don’t be scared. You’ll see, Fabienne is a really nice person and she even feels sorry that you had to meet a creep like me,” he said, using his favorite English word that I had taught him. “She really wants to meet you.”

  As Luc drove me back to the quay, we discovered that I had sent him the wrong date for my arrival and that he had been there waiting for me with friends and flowers a day earlier. He dropped me off at Varuna with his dinghy and when my bags were all in the cockpit, he asked, “Are you all right?” He looked at me, waiting for a smile of reassurance. I reluctantly gave it. Promising to come and get me for lunch once I settled in, he motored back to his family.

  Unlocking the companionway, I pulled out the slats and stepped down into my dark, damp little home, which hadn’t been aired out for two rainy weeks. Completely drained, I threw all the luggage up forward, curled up and went to sleep.

  That afternoon, I finally hugged my buddy Dinghy, who had been staying on Thea. Luc introduced me to Tristan and Fabienne and we awkwardly sat down at the familiar table for the meal. Suddenly overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past two weeks, and now seeing the lady and child from the pictures, I excused myself and went out on deck, not wanting to cry in front of them. Fabienne quietly followed and, without saying a word, put her arms around me and let me cry.

  Several days later, we moved the boats to Arué, a quieter spot two lagoons up, and moored them close by one another. I had given Luc’s office phone number to Jeri so she could leave a message and, every evening, I watched his facial expression as he came home to Thea. Every other day, I caught le truck to the post office in Papeete, or Luc would take me to his office, and I called my mother. Her voice was too weak to carry over the long-distance static, so these were mostly one-sided conversations where I rambled on about my daily doings, trying to sound happy and full of news I didn’t have.

  Day in and day out, I moped through the rituals of life in a torpid circle of waiting and despair. Loathing solitude, yet unable to muster the energy to make new friends, I opted instead for spending time with the only person I knew well, Luc, and his family. Fabienne took me under her wing during those joyless days and I accepted her friendship. She was charming and very kind and I liked spending time with her and little Tristan. We went to the market together, prepared meals and, occasionally, she tried to help me forget my problems with stories about her own.

  Day in, day out, the bustle of Tahitian life whirled around like a cyclone while I waited quietly in its eye. Finally, Luc came home early one evening, his expression telegraphing the news. The phone call had arrived.

  7

  Brisk trade winds blew over the lagoon of Arué on Tahiti’s northern coast, and processions of squalls brought cool waves of relief from the endless days of tropical sun. In the late-afternoon stillness, rhythmic paddling signaled the sunset, as heavily muscled Tahitians and French rowed their canoes up and down the lagoon in front of always another swirling backdrop of color. Along the quay, Tahitian families sat watching, drinking their Hinanos, the local beer, or fishing from the seawall.

  As the rainy season wept its last tears over the neighboring islands of Mooréa, Bora-Bora, Raiatea and Huahine, an international parade of cruising sailboats came and went, lingering for a while on its way to other less traveled island destinations, unable to resist the siren song of Tahiti, the Pacific’s most fabled waypoint.

  Varuna, secured to an abandoned mooring, became a peaceful haven. We had settled in to stay awhile. A new yellow-and-blue wind scoop rigged up on her forward hatch funneled a little of the trade winds down into the cabin like a natural air conditioner, a cheering improvement over the stagnant air that had kept her inhabitants in a perpetual sweat.

  A channel separates the islands of Tahiti and Mooréa by only 5 miles, and the lagoon of Cook Bay on Mooréa was only 20 miles away from the busier Arué. For four months, I alternated between the two, depending on what was needed and my mood. When working on the boat, I stayed in Arué, which was convenient to the city of Papeete and its chandlery and markets; when I needed some peace and quiet, I sailed to Mooréa and anchored where the clear waters were turquoise, lapis-lazuli or azure, depending on the depth, and where, 15 feet below Varuna’s hull, the sandy bottom seemed close enough to touch.

  After a couple of weeks in Arué, Katapoul, a boat I knew from Papeete, sailed into the harbor and her skipper, Claude, waved to me. After anchoring, he invited me over for a visit.

  One month earlier, when I was leaving for New York, Luc had said that Varuna would be looked after, but things had turned out badly. He had detached Varuna from Thea, and then with some business associates, took off to Mooréa where Thea had gone aground on a reef. While they were stuck there, a storm had boiled up a mess in Papeete’s harbor, Varuna’s anchor dragged and she had ended up knocking against the boat downwind of her.

  Claude had come to the rescue, Luc told me later, found a second anchor and secured her. He had also turned over the dinghy that was filling with rain, and retied the radar reflector that had broken a binding and was making a holy racket banging against the mast. Hearing what had happened upon my return from New York, I thanked Claude for taking care of Varuna and we chatted for a while, calling across the water. It wasn’t until less complicated days that I would discover what good friends he and his girlfriend Margot could be.

  Claude was a spry Frenchman, with dry wit and a resemblance to Crocodile Dundee, and he hopped around like a booby, his eyes twinkling, and told me about Margot, who was back in the States visiting her family. Katapoul, he said, named from a combination of his brother’s nicknames, was 30 feet long. He had built her himself and, as most boats do, the craft with which she was constructed and the care she obviously received revealed much about the warmth and character of her owner.

  Over the next few days, we shared our meals, walked around and shopped together. Claude got me laughing again, patiently trying to teach me to windsurf, and after many dunkings and aching arms from pulling up the water-laden sail, I finally gave up and opted for rides on the back of the board as he navigated around the lagoon.

  On one of our first days together, Claude and I were walking past the Arué soccer field toward the main road where we were going to hail le truck for a ride into town. In the course of conversation, I mentioned to him that my mother had died a week earlier, and he stopped in his tracks.

  “My God, Tania,” he said. “You’re so nonchalant. Your mother just died? You may as well have been telling me that you just bought a new dress.”

  “We’ve known that she was dying for the past couple of years,” I said, also surprised that I had said it so simply. “Now that it’s over, all I really feel is relief. She suffered.”

  “Still, you’re on the o
ther side of the world from your family. This must be very bad for you.”

  I shrugged and told him that I didn’t mean to be nonchalant. So much had happened that, if anything, I just felt numb. Claude didn’t push it.

  It seemed that as soon as Margot returned to Katapoul from the United States, we instantly became best friends. She was a burst of energy, sensitive, intelligent and extremely patient and, best of all, she was twenty. The sailing world is so dominated by men that to find a girl close to my age, and American no less, was a rare treat and we latched on to one another like long-lost sisters. Together, we three worked on our boats and made daily treks into town on le truck to the post office, market and finally the patisserie, where we sat indulging in cappuccinos and apple tarts. Always joking and betting on our disagreements, we sat back in the shade and watched the splendid parade of people go by.

  Margot and Claude were always spiffing up Katapoul, oiling, greasing, painting and scrubbing, which gave me incentive to do the same on Varuna. Even Lawrence, a quiet boy from a family boat neighboring Varuna, offered to help, and together we went about starting Varuna’s first major refit project. We hitchhiked to the industrial section of Papeete’s waterfront and bought some marine plywood, nuts and bolts. Measuring, sawing and drilling away, we enlarged my little bunk, made an extra cushion out of the ones in the forepeak that I planned to do away with anyway and finally there was a comfortable bed stretching across the width of Varuna.

  One afternoon, Claude showed me how to tow Varuna to the quay with my dinghy. “Imagine that you are truly alone,” he said. “And there is no one around to tow you through a narrow pass into a harbor and you have no engine. All you have to do is tie a line with about ten feet of chain between Varuna and the dinghy, then row, hard. It may take a while, but it’s possible to do it yourself. Try it. If you screw up, I’ll come to help.” Margot stayed in the cockpit while I got in the dinghy and pulled Varuna under muscle power a hundred feet across the lagoon. After all my apprehension, the feat was accomplished and I felt extra good about myself and my capabilities.