19
On her way back to camp it begins to rain. The red soil churns to mud beneath her pony’s hooves. Elsa flings her drenched skirt over the satchel andkohau on her lap, leaving her half-bare legs dangling beside the pony’s flanks. A pungent heat rises from the beast. Her leather boots darken, her stockings freckle with mud under the battering raindrops. I will have to dry off, she thinks. I will have to get warm. And clean. Yes. There are necessities. And if the wind is strong, she will have to fasten the crates, then check the tent stakes. And if there are leaks—when did she last check the canvas tops?—she will have to patch them. It might even be a mounting storm, she thinks. Hopes. The needles of water, the brine-clogged air, the spray of mud, are disruptions she needs.
Good-bye to the two Mrs. Beazleys. . . .
She wipes the water from her face with her sleeves. As the pony lumbers along the path, Anakena comes into view. She dismounts at the bottom of the hill. With one hand she leads the animal, with the other holds the satchel andkohau wrapped in her skirt, so that she strides, half-hunched, through the rain over the rise. The camp below is empty.
I have first-rate vision.
Elsa tethers the pony and stumbles down the hill, taking refuge in the tent. The canvas shudders all around her. She towels off thekohau and her notebook. She lights the lantern, searches her mind for her tasks:Check leaks, secure stakes, move crates inside . Two cockroaches scurry toward her, and she stomps them with her boots.
She raises the lantern to the drooping canvas ceiling and searches for small tears. Impossible to hear the drip of a leak with the rumbling of this rain, she thinks. She will have to scrutinize every inch. But as her finger traces the long seams, silence descends. The rumbling has stopped. She steps outside to see that the sun has freed itself from the tatters of gray cloud. She now sits on the sand, watching the brightening sky, waiting for the rain to resume.
In the distance, through the mist, she can see where they first anchored the schooner.Good-bye to the two Mrs. Beazleys. That’s what Kierney shouted from the dinghy.I have first-rate vision.
Elsa returns to the tent and sits on her cot. Opposite, draped across a piece of twine, is Edward’s nightshirt. An image of Alice slung across Edward’s sleeping form springs to her mind, and she tries to push it away. She still has work to do. From beneath her cot she pulls her stack of notebooks, locates the one with her notes on therongorongo, and opens it. In a cup beside her, she finds her fountain pen, the one her father gave her when he fell ill.Professor Beazley seems quite fond of our dear Alice. Elsa pushes the pen firmly against the page:
I have determined a strong likelihood that the rongorongo is boustrophedon. Alternate lines read upside down. Need confirmation.
She sets the pen down. But is it possible her father meant—? No. The idea is ridiculous, the story too absurd. A professor who falls in love with the half-wit daughter of his colleague! She isn’t well. Her forehead burns. She is shivering in her damp dress. Perhaps she has caught something from the lepers, something strange and feverish that tricks the mind, makes you see frightening things. She leans forward and her hands, fidgety, begin to untie the wet laces of her boots.
After all, it is insane. Falling in love with a girl he’s not permitted to love. Marrying the girl’s sister, the girl’s caretaker, so that he can be near her. Elsa was the one to make the sacrifice, forAlice. If she hadn’t had Alice to look after, she could have found a real husband, she might even have found a way to be with Max. She could not have been—the word rises up before her in the dark tent—duped.Was it possible she’d given up the life she wanted, not for Alice, but forEdward ?
“Elsa!” From outside comes Edward’s voice.
A moment later, his rain-slicked head appears in the tent, water dripping from his beard. He seems cautious. He is waiting for me to scold him, thinks Elsa. He is waiting to see what I know.
“Alice is drenched. Would you come help?”
Help, thinks Elsa. Of course. I’m always ready to help. I’m the governess again. The governess in his employ to take care of Alice.
“She’ll catch pneumonia.”
“Well,” Elsa begins with unexpected sarcasm, “we must get her out of her wet clothes, then.” And you are frightened to do it yourself, she thinks. Frightened of how it might seem.
Elsa grabs a blanket, wraps it around her shoulders, puts on a hat, and follows Edward to Alice’s tent. Alice is facing away from the entrance. Her blouse, wet and translucent, clings to her skin, and Elsa can see the strong pulse of her back.
“Somebody’s been parading about in the rain,” says Elsa. “I wonder who could have been parading about in the rain? It couldn’t have been Allie because she’s been told over and overnot to go running about in deluges.”
Elsa steps behind her, resting her hands on Alice’s shoulders. Beneath her palms the slim bones arch gently. She traces the cliff of Alice’s back. It is strange:This is the body she knows best. Better than Edward’s, better than her own. This is the body her hands always seek. This is the body she has watched grow, the body it has always been her duty to protect. She wishes now she could leave her hands here forever, nestle them against this warm skin, knead them into this flesh and forget the chasm of cold air between her and Alice. She would like to slip into this other being, blink her eyes and say:I am Alice. Instead, she begins the only thing she does know how to do—tending. She unfastens the top button of Alice’s blouse.
“I’ll check the equipment,” says Edward, slipping out of the tent.
His delicacy is too overstated.
“Allie.” Elsa’s fingers inch toward Alice’s jaw. “Allie, look at me. What’s wrong?”
But Alice only sways.
“We must get you out of these wet clothes.” Elsa continues to unbutton the blouse, then unclasps the skirt. In the steamer trunk, she finds a fresh towel and rubs it over Alice’s head, works it around her neck and arms. When Alice is dry and blanket-wrapped, Elsa crouches before her, takes her hands. “Allie, has anything . . . happened?”
Alice’s eyes return from their inward stare, taking in the room, taking in Elsa.
“I mean, with Beazley . . .”
Alice’s eyes flash to full alertness. “Beazley does notdoes not love you!”
Elsa nearly falls back from the anger in Alice’s voice. But her fingertips, by instinct, reach for Alice’s cheek. “Allie.”
Alice flinches, then swats at Elsa, her nails scratching Elsa’s neck. “He loves Alice! Do you hear me?” A bitter sadness rings through her voice. “He loves Alice!”
Elsa sits at the table by the beach. Across from her is Edward, who has wiped all traces of rain from his face, but now sweats. Several red splotches have erupted beneath his skin, spilling over his cheeks. Alice is asleep now, in her tent.
“I am not a sick man,” he says. “Please do not look at me like that. I am not a sick man.”
Elsa is silent.
“You asked me to care for your sister and I have cared for her. I have watched her and waited on her. You wanted me to love her and I loved her. I’ve never . . . neverdone anything . . .” He produces a handkerchief from his pocket and pats his forehead. “She plays around, you know her games. She grabs and kisses. Play, Elsa. Just play. You mustn’t think I would do anything inappropriate.”
Elsa does, in fact, believe what he is saying; but something larger, something she can’t place, disturbs her.
He crumples his handkerchief into a ball. “I have always tried to be a good man, Elsa. I am not an exciting man, not an entertaining man, not a passionate man, but I am a good man. After all this time, I’d think you would know that. Please allow me that one credit.”
Elsa looks up at the sky—a dim blue dome above them. A good man. Yes, and what of it? Does he want her to soothehim now? To makehim feel better?
Edward’s eyes follow the path of her own. He looks at the sky, the grass, then finally at her.
“Elsa, I harbor no delusions. It is the benefit of being a perpetual scholar. I do not daydream, and I do not let desire deceive me. Let us at least admit to each other that you never wanted to marry me. That has always been clear. You never would have married me if you hadn’t had Alice to look after.”
Elsa holds her hand in front of her face, spreads her fingers, and examines the web of lines and grooves in her skin.
“I am old, but not a fool, Elsa. I know where you stand. I’ve known from the beginning.”
Yes. She asked them to tolerate each other, to be kind to each other, but nothing more.
“What would you like? Would you like me to apologize? Because I care for Alice, just as you asked? Well, I refuse to. You cannot control us. You cannot dictate the terms of lives for three people. Do you insist that she show me the same polite indifference as you? You cannot decide that for her.” He stops as if to gather the scraps of disparate thoughts. “Elsa, I have never been loved. I know you care for me, but I am not the kind of man people fall in love with. But Alice loves me, is in love with me, and I refuse to disdain that simply because she’s different, or because you didn’t factor that into your arrangement. How could Alice’s affections come between us when you have seen to it, from the beginning, that there is nothing between us . . . ? Are you hearing any of this? Elsa?”
Elsa recalls what her father said years before:Old Beazley has suffered his fair share of amorous afflictions. Enough to send him all the way to the African continent. Afflictions so great he could find comfort only in a girl incapable of hurting him?
“Well,” says Elsa. Her lips feel rigid, her tongue swollen. Each word is a stone. “Alice—does—love—you.” She looks at Edward’s furrowed brow, his sunken cheeks. He is like a man awaiting absolution. Isshe supposed to absolve him? Is she once again supposed to attend to someone else? But howeasy it would be to give it all up, to walk away, from Edward, from Alice, from herself. What, in the end, binds her to goodness, to love, to anything, but her own will to be bound? Duties are not facts; they are feelings. She takes a deep breath. It seems so frightening, so simple. She can sense her lips curling into a nervous smile: “But Alice has the mind of achild. ”
“Elsa—”
“She cannot love you. Really. You mustn’t fool yourself, Edward.”
“You yourself have always said she comprehends more—”
“Amentia, madness, stupidity. Call it what you like. It doesn’t change—”
“Please, Elsa—”
“Don’t you understand? After all this time? With all your degrees and books and your anthropological studies you can’t see what she really is? Why don’t you studyher ? Interview her and see what theory you come up with. You wouldn’t even have to travel. Research in-bloody-situ, Edward. Write a five-hundred-page volume, have a glossary, but it will say just one thing—”
“Stop.”
“Imbecile!” This is the word people have always used. With each syllable, her palm smacks the table. “Im-be-cile!”
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.