24
The flush of fever came at dawn, crept across her forehead, mounted her cheeks, then made a slow advance down her neck. It attacked her shoulders, tried to shake her from sleep, but she refused to wake. She pressed herself farther into the cool grass. Her fingers, hot and tense, wrapped themselves around a cold stone, a cube of ice. Her mind slowed, slept, then woke with a start. Images spilled before her: a frog dangling upside down, a seed floating in a jar. An island. A white flower in a field of shadows.
Her tongue swelled, hot and puffy, a loaf of bread rising in the oven of her mouth. Her neck grew firm, her throat thick, every channel hardening until the whine of air struggling through the last open pathway reached her ears. I have become a tree, she thought. She turned then, or thought she turned. Her face met a firm wet surface, her hair, damp with sweat, fell thickly around her. Darkness. Her toes tingled—or was it her fingertips? Where did the crab go? Was it crawling over her now with its thick hot feet—was that the fire she felt moving across her body? Yes, it was so hot here. The sun was rising, spilling its heat like lava. She was in a volcano, tossed by an explosion.
“You need help. Put your arm around my neck. Please, Greer. Try to move. There. Yes, that’s it. Perfect. See how easy?”
She was floating now above the grass—was she in a dream? She was searching for the white flower. But she couldn’t keep her eyes open, the ground sped beneath her, shook. An earthquake. She could feel the trembling, could hear her teeth click like tossed dice. And then she landed, and water washed over her face. Flooding her eyes and nose and mouth. And then an arrow, a musket, a revolver, a cannonball, shot through her arm, broke through her flesh to invade her shoulder, her neck, her head. . . .
Eyes closed, her breathing thick and strained, she tried to sit up. But gravity, a tidal wave, tossed her back.
Thick blankets weighed against her, and still she shivered. “Cold,” she whispered.
“I know. It is the fever. It gives you chills. It will pass.”
“When?”
There was silence, and she roused one eyelid from its swollen slumber; a soft yellow light shone on the nearby nightstand—a candle? Or a lightbulb blurred by fever? She barely made out the white wall, the desk, the foot of the bed. Where was he?
Through the blankets she felt a hand squeeze her elbow. “Here,” he said, but the voice was miles away. Like a recording of a voice, a recording of a recording. She let her head slip onto her shoulder and looked down. On the floor beside the bed he lay supine, one arm tucked behind his head.
She awoke in darkness to warm water flooding her mouth.
“Greer, you must drink. You must flush the toxins from your system. Please, you must try.”
But her lips were heavy, and loose, could barely hold themselves to her face.
A creature now stirred in her stomach, stretched its limbs, somersaulted in the back of her throat, and broke free with fury. Her throat burned, her nose burned.
“Yes,querida. That is okay. Your body is trying to cleanse itself.”
A rancid smell rose beside her. A towel wiped her face. “Bueno, Doctora.”
“Mahina?”
“Sí, Doctora.”
Greer forced her eyes open, and saw the speckled light through the curtains. Like shadows, Mahina and Vicente seemed to float through the small room, pouring water in the basin, wringing cloths, folding towels, whispering in Spanish. They moved fluidly together; they looked like dancers, beautiful dancing nurses.
“What day . . . ?” Her throat hurt too much to finish.
“Saturday,” said Vicente. “Three days. The doctor says you are improving. But you still must rest. Rest and drink fluids.”
“Doctor?”
“Doctor for thedoctora. ” Mahina’s voice sang through the room.
“I’m not improving.”
“Your color is much better,” said Vicente, and Mahina agreed.
“Sí, sí,” she said. “But sleep now.”
Greer rolled onto her side, her hair snarling. She slowly raised her arm and tried to free it.
“Momento” came Vicente’s voice. And then she felt his fingers trace three careful seams along her scalp, felt a pleasant coolness as he lifted the hair from her neck and began to weave. With each slow stitch of the braid, her mind blurred.
In her dreams, she saw the emerald-green island. She floated above it, examining each fern, each patch of moss, each white blossom.
When she awoke, she felt a breeze through her window and thought she was there, in the sky above the island, a cloud. But when she opened her eyes, it came back: the room, theresidencial, Easter Island, her fever.
“Do you still feel the chills?” Vicente was seated on a small stool beside the bed. Stubble matted his cheeks, his pants were crumpled.
“I just feel a little achy,” she said.
“Your body exhausted itself fighting the poison.” Vicente stroked his chin. “You look much better.”
Greer looked down at herself. The sheets were twisted about her ankles. Her pale legs jutted from a wrinkled orange caftan. In her hand was the plaque of the Virgin Mary. Had it been put there by Mahina, or in her delirium had she grabbed it? She set it down.
“The venom,” she said. “Is it out?”
“With the spiders there is very little venom. But it is very potent. It had already reached your system. You will be okay though. The color in your cheeks, really, is very good. I cannot tell you. When I first saw you . . . well, it was something.” Vicente rose slowly from the stool. “I must find Mahina and tell her you are awake and talking. That the fever has broken.”
As he stepped out into the hall, he closed the door quietly behind him.
Greer took a deep breath. Her eyelids were no longer heavy. The fever had lifted from her forehead. The chill on her neck was gone. She raised both arms and bent them effortlessly. She rolled her head in circles, wiggled her toes. How strange and wonderful this body, she thought. Bracing her hands against the wall, she stretched her feet to the bed’s edge. Each tendon, each muscle fiber, each nerve, awakened. Never had she been so impressed with her limbs.
Greer looked around her. On the nightstand lay her stack of books and the jar with her magnolia seed. The basin was still on the desk, a pile of folded cloths beside it, and a pitcher of water.
“Doctora!” The door swung open and Mahina, followed by Vicente, burst in. She lay her palm on Greer’s forehead.
“Sí, sí,” she said to Vicente. “Está mejor.” Mahina let her pleasure fill the room, then snatched it back. “Why did you go off like that? Outside Hanga Roa! In the dark? You act crazy. For three days you are sick.”
“I’m sorry, Mahina. I was out for a walk. I got sleepy.”
“You are lucky. Very lucky. This island is not a place to act so crazy. Too many things go wrong here. When you go home to America, then you do crazy things, as many as you like. Here you will stay at Mahina’s at night and sleep in bed. Yes?”
“Yes.”
Mahina narrowed her eyes.
“Yes,” said Greer.
Moving to the foot of the bed, Mahina untwisted the sheet, fluffed it out, and spread it over Greer. “You had many visitors. I did not know you know so many people here on Rapa Nui.” She moved to Greer’s side of the bed and folded the sheet beneath the mattress. “Everyone says the Americandoctora is dying, and everyone come to Mahina’s to see. Mario. Vittorio.” She moved to the other side and did the same. “Like a movie, they think. Nothing happens here, nothing to do, so they come to look at mydoctora. ” Mahina gazed at Greer, at herdoctora, folded back the top of the sheet, and tucked it beneath Greer’s arms. Mahina had made the bed with Greer in it. “I told them no, go away.” She rested her hands on her hips. “Even Ramon, I told no. I tell them thedoctora is private person and would not like it.”
“But you let Vicente in?”
“Ah, yes.” Mahina smiled, clearly pleased that this point had been raised. “But Vicente is yourcolleague. ”
“I have many colleagues here, Mahina. But I’m glad you let him in.”
“Se?or Urstedt and Isabel come by. I say no, and Se?or Urstedt come sneak through the window to see you.”
“Fortunately,” said Vicente, “Sven didn’t fit, and Mahina caught him by the legs. I am sorry you missed that, Greer. You would have enjoyed the sight.”
Mahina smiled, rubbed her hands together. She liked being part of the joke. “Sí, sí. Now I go to fix lunch for Isabel. She is much trouble. She want to be thin and will eat only fruit and vegetable! When you are hungry, Greer, I fix you ten chickens.” She left with a small slam of the door and could be heard humming through the courtyard.
“Vicente, listen, I owe you a big thank-you.”
“Well, it was Luka Tepano who found you. He brought me to you. And then we all did our part. Mahina especially. You are like family to her. She does not want you to leave,” said Vicente, pointing to how Greer had been sealed to the mattress.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere yet. I’m tired.”
“Yes, of course.” Vicente retreated toward the door. “You need your rest.”
“No. I didn’t mean . . .”
“I will leave you to sleep. But first, here.” He pulled a small object from his pocket and put it in her palm. “You had it in your hand when we put you into bed. You would not let go. I had to pull each finger off.” He laughed. “You’re quite strong, you know.”
“I had it?” It was roughly the size of a walnut. The shell had ossified. “It’s a fossil.”
“Perhaps that is why you were out so late. You were on the trail of a fossil. There was no time to lose. It was in the caves. And when you found it, when you picked it off the ground, the spider was hiding beneath it.”
“I like that story. I like that story very much.”
“Now you rest.”
He closed the door gently and Greer rolled the nut in her hand, held it up to the light: “Hello, littleangio sperma .”
A few nights later, Vicente came by her room to report that Burke-Jones had decided to leave the island.
“He said he is sorry,” said Vicente, standing over her bed. “He asked me to say good-bye.”
Greer hadn’t seen Randolph since the night in the cemetery. “He couldn’t stop by himself? It’s not exactly a long walk from the Espíritu.”
“You know Burke-Jones. I don’t think he is fond of good-byes. But he said he will miss you. Actually, he said”—and now Vicente lowered his head, and muttered—“‘I will miss her.’ “
Greer remembered the picture in his wallet. Lydia. “I guess England will be good for him.”
“Burke-Jones is going to India.”
“India?”
“I know. A surprise to us all.”
“What’s in India?”
“Other than one billion people?”
“You’re definitely in good spirits.”
“Oh, but I am!” he exclaimed, sitting on the foot of the bed. “I am awaiting a telegram.”
“From?”
“Who else? My favorite German admiral! Another dispatch from his ship.”
“I think you’ve become much more interested in themissing tablets than the ones you have.”
“This thought has occurred to me as well.”
“A sort of scholar’s half-empty approach.”
“But the glass will fill soon. I’ll find those tablets.”
“So, India, what will Randolph be doing there?”
“He is interested in something to do with the construction of the Taj Mahal.”
“Wait.” Greer closed her eyes, raised her hand in the air. “I’m picking up on something. An image of . . . hundreds of miniature Taj Mahals.”
“A little universe of marble palaces.”
They laughed.
“Well, good for him,” said Greer, adjusting the covers. “But I’ll miss him. Sven will be sad.”
“Se?orita Nosticio will help him through his sorrow.”
“Isabel? They’re really together?”
“I told you. He likes the older women.”
There was a gentle knock at the door.
“It’s open,” said Greer.
In came Mahina, carrying two bowls, eyeing Greer and Vicente with pleasure. She handed a bowl to each of them and pulled two shiny forks from the pocket of her apron.
“Thank you, Mahina,” Greer said.
“Peti,” she sang, closing the door behind her.
“Peaches. Uh-oh. I know what this means. You’re in my room, sitting on my bed.” Greer pierced the shiny half-peach with her fork and held it up. “I think this is Mahina’s idea of a dowry.”
“Well, I’m holding out for anumu feast.”
Greer slid a slice of peach into her mouth and let the syrup coat her tongue. “You know, I’ve wanted to say something to Mahina. About her husband.”
“Not an easy topic.”
“She’s a friend, though. I should be able to say something.”
“What would you say?”
“I don’t know. That she should get herself a ticket to Santiago, to Buenos Aires, to Rio, and she should see the world, get on with her life. I see Mahina and Ramon on a romantic getaway, sipping tropical drinks, staying at a hotel wherethey get served breakfast every morning and someone comes to cleantheir room.”
“I believe the English word for this kind of wish ismeddling. ”
“Caring.”
“Ah, yes. Another lesson in Greer English. I’ll soon be fluent.”
“Meddling is a manifestation of caring. There. A compromise.”
“Very well,” said Vicente. “But where do you see yourself? Where doyou want to go?”
“Good question.”
Vicente now concentrated on his peaches, deftly quartering each one as he spoke. “I mean, how long do you think you will stay?”
“On the island? I don’t know.” It was odd she hadn’t figured this out yet. Her research was nearing an end, but the idea of going home, to Marblehead, seemed unreal; her house, her life there, all felt impossibly distant. “When everything is wrapped up, I guess. I’m just waiting to hear about the fossil. If I can get confirmation on the species, I can write up my results.”
“And then you are free to go?”
“Not free,” she said. “But yes, then I can go.”
The next day Greer felt strong enough to go back to the lab to check on her samples, to make sure everything was in order. She decided to review her notebooks and any untouched reading materials, settling in at one of her lab tables.
The last European account was from the young Pierre Loti, a Frenchman who had visited in 1872, almost a century after Captain Cook. Loti’s tone was different from other explorers’. Here was a writer, a poet, who came seeking wonder.
I went ashore there years ago in my green youth from a sailing frigate, after days of strong wind and obscuring clouds; there has remained with me the recollection of a half fantastic land, a land of dreams.
Like all the other visitors, Loti finds his scarves and hats in great demand. He bemoans the theft of a red velvet hat with brass buttons, snatched from his head by a small boy who breaks into song. But Loti is welcomed by the Rapa Nui in a way others haven’t been. When touring the island, Loti finds himself sleepy and is taken by an islander to rest in a hut.
The roof of reeds which shelters me is sustained by palm branches—but where did they get them since their island is without trees and has hardly any vegetation beyond reeds and grapes. In this small space, hardly a meter and a half high by four meters long a thousand things are carefully suspended; little idols of black wood which are engraved with coarse enameling, lances with points of sharpened obsidian, paddles carved with human figures, feather headdresses, ornaments for the dance or for combat and some utensils of various shapes, of use unknown to me which all seem extremely ancient. . . .
But when you think of it, all this dried out wood of their war clubs and their gods, where does it come from? And their cats, their rabbits? . . . The mice that stroll around the houses everywhere. I don’t suppose anybody brought them. Where did they come from? The slightest things on this isolated island bring up unanswered questions: one is amazed that there exists a flora and a fauna.
Loti then drifts off to sleep.
Waking like that in the savage’s dreary nest I felt a feeling of extreme homesickness. I felt far away, farther away than ever and lost. And I was taken with that extreme anguish which comes with island sickness and no place in the world would have given it to me so acutely as right here, the immensity of the austral seas round about me. . . .
Greer set the book down; Loti was right. She remembered that first day in the Rano Aroi crater, standing in the reeds. Even in this “land of dreams” she had felt the momentary anguish of solitude. And how could she not? The island was like a thing of myths, a fear made physical: solitude itself. And that perhaps was one of the reasons she’d come, to explore the geography of her loneliness.
Voices came from the hallway. Isabel and Sven. She could hear the thump of boots approach her door. There was a knock, a muffled laugh, another knock.
“Open.”
“Ah, back to work! Definitely a full recovery!” said Sven. He moved in and hugged her. “No surprise, though. You had the best of care.”
“I did,” she said, feeling herself smile. Even on this isolated island she had found a community: people who checked in on her, acquaintances, friends. She’d nearly completed her first solo fieldwork. She was coming to terms with what Thomas had done. What more did she need?
“When they first carried you back to Mahina’s you looked so awful. Really, like a corpse.”
“Thanks, Sven.”
“And now, color in your cheeks! You had no color. I’m telling you, Greer. Nothing.”
“Well, I’ve been outside, moving around. I pretty much feel back to normal.”
“We are very happy for that,” said Isabel, clasping Sven’s hand. She was easily a foot shorter than he was, and a decade older, but these differences somehow produced a sense of balance.
“We’re off for a tour,” said Isabel. “Will you join us?”
“Tour of what?”
“The island!”
“Is there really anything you haven’t yet seen?”
“Oh,” said Isabel, “we’ve not explored all the coast, the craters. I have always explored on paper. Today, Sven will take me to explore on foot.”
At this moment Greer realized how Isabel was dressed—hiking boots, khaki shorts, and Sven’s yellow T-shirt, too large, billowing over her belt:Swede e π .
“I’m going to stay put and read. But thanks.”
“If you need anything,” said Sven, “let us know. And if you don’t, make something up. Now that Burke-Jones is gone, things feel slow around here.”
As they left, she could hear Sven singing in the hallway.
Greer returned to the final section of Loti’s account, when an improvised chariot was assembled in the frigate’s launch and Loti’s shipmates, one hundred of them, began to remove amoai . The islanders made no objection, as though the statue were valueless. Roggeveen, one hundred and fifty years earlier, had seen fires lit before the idols and islanders kneeling before them in veneration. Loti sees something different:
A great group followed us this morning across the wet grass of the plain, and once arrived they start to dance like dervishes, lightfooted with their hair blowing out in the wind, naked and reddish, delicately tinted blue by their tattooing, their slender bodies moving against the brown stones and the black horizons; they dance, they dance over the enormous figures, placing their toes against the faces of the monsters, kicking them noiselessly in the nose and cheeks. I can’t understand what they are singing in the constant racket of the gusts of wind and the surf.
The people of Rapa Nui, who venerate so many fetishes and little gods, seem to have no respect for the tombs. They don’t remember the dead sleeping below them.
Or perhaps, thought Greer, they did remember the dead below them. And perhaps they remembered something that made them want to dance across the faces of their ancestors. Might they have felt rage at the dead?