4
The warship’s interior was draped in velvet, the stateroom laid with Persian carpets, the steel walls hung with gilt-framed watercolors of the Bois de Boulogne. On the tables sat glasses of champagne, splayed decks of cards, jade ashtrays spilling cigarettes, cups of jasmine tea. On a bench beneath a map of the Kaiser’s Pacific coaling stations lay an onyx chessboard, the king stranded in eternal checkmate. The rooms were thick with smoke, with people, with laughter. At that very moment, aKapit?nleutnant was telling a joke:So there’s a Brit, a German, and a Chinaman and the genie tells them each to make a wish. . . .
We’ve heard this before!someone hollered. It was always the Brits, the Germans, and the Chinamen—the usual crowd on the warships at Tsingtao Harbor, in China’s Yellow Sea.
Not this one . . .
All right, all right, go ahead. . . .
Then into the smoke-filled room floated the forgotten sound of the wireless, the radio’s ancient crackle. There was a shuffle, and soon an officer broke into the festivity. The phonograph’s needle was lifted.
The archduke’s assassination, he said, it has begun a war.
There was a moment of silence as they all looked at one another. What these men had spent years been practicing for, what they had spent the past month anticipating, had now arrived.
So the British stood and dusted their lapels. The Chinese set their cups down. A strange energy pervaded the room—a game, they all knew, had begun. And, like children agreeing to close their eyes and count to ten while someone hides, they extended politenesses. Hands were shaken, apologies offered. In German and English and Chinese, good-byes were said. Soon the Germans, hundreds of men barely twenty years old, were left amid the silence of their festooned warship, imagining, no doubt, that awful sound—one-two-three-four-five—unsure, though, who was counting and who was supposed to hide. They were in China, thousands of miles from Germany, from home. What did this mean?
For this answer, the men looked to Vice Admiral Graf von Spee, striding into the abandoned elegance, the halted party of peacetime, in his gold-trimmed uniform.
“Men,” he said. “Prepare the ship. Strip it for war and await further orders.”
So the tapestries were hauled down, the carpets pulled from the floors. Into the bay they tossed everything: armchairs, sofas, pianos, paintings. The men, leaning over the gunwale, watched as porcelain vases bobbed across the harbor, as guitars and mandolins cartwheeled in the whitecaps. These waters, in which their ships had been moored for years, now seemed foreboding. It was only a matter of time before the British tried to begin a blockade and sink them at anchor, then only a matter of time before the Russians, the French, and the Japanese, perhaps, began the hunt as well.
They knew they must escape—but to where?
Amid the chaos, someone in the wardroom, a young officer with foresight, surveyed the now-naked room of steel and said to his friends beside him, “And so history is written.”
Von Spee, studying his logbook, heard this and looked up. With a hint of that arrogance for which he was famous, he said to his men: “And so we will write it.”
—Fleet of Misfortune: Graf von Spee and the Impossible Journey Home
5
Data Compiled for Professor Edward Beazley
by the Royal Geographical Society
Lowther Lodge, Kensington Gore
Te Pito O Te Henua, Known as Rapa Nui;
Commonly Called Easter Island,
South Pacific Ocean
Latitude 28°10'S, Longitude 109°30'W
1722 (Easter Day): Admiral Jacob Roggeveen (Netherlands):First documented contact with a naked population of mixed race who worshipped huge statues, “squatting on their heels with heads bowed down. . . . The stone images at first caused us to be struck with astonishment because we could not comprehend how it was possible that people who are destitute of heavy or thick timber, and also of stout cordage, out of which to construct gear, had been able to erect them; nevertheless some of these statues were a good thirty feet in height and broad in proportion.” Some natives were noted as having slit earlobes hanging to their shoulders, which they could tie up over the edges of their ears. Inhabitants were described as cheerful, peaceful, and well mannered, but expert at thievery. They swam and paddled to the ship in frail canoes.Through a misunderstanding, one native was shot aboard ship and a dozen were shot ashore. A tablecloth and several hats were recorded missing from the admiral’s ship.
1770: Don Felipe González (Spain):Reported that the natives had their own script. He estimated a population of three thousand, but no children were to be seen. He noted large statues speckling the coast. A declaration addressed to His Majesty Carlos III of Spain was presented to natives who signed their names (in the form of birds and curious figures) “with every sign of joy and happiness.” The island was renamed San Carlos Island. After four days the Spaniards left and never returned to their “territory.”
1774: Captain James Cook:Reported a decimated, poverty-stricken population of approximately 600 men and 30 women. Noting several heaps of stones in front of narrow descents, Cook suspected a network of underground caves in which natives were hiding. The natives refused access to these areas. The colossi were no longer venerated, and most looked to have been toppled. A Tahitian on board partially able to understand native dialect determined that the colossi were not divine images but memorials to deceased persons.
Cook noted in his journal: “We could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures. . . . They must have been a work of immense time, and sufficiently show the ingenuity and perseverance of the islanders in the age in which they were built; for the present inhabitants have most certainly had no hand in them, as they do not even repair the foundations of those going to decay.”
The expedition left with a small supply of sweet potatoes.
1786: Jean-Fran?ois de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse (France):Noted approximately two thousand people on the island; Frenchmen were admitted to caves and subterranean passages where women and children had been hiding; it is believed the peaceful conduct of Captain Cook allowed for this access. Attempts to introduce pigs, goats, and sheep unsuccessful.
1864:Brother Eugène Eyraud, a French Catholic missionary, settled on the island; it is believed that the majority of the population converted to Christianity. No statues were in upright position.
1877:Population: 111 (reports of a smallpox epidemic related to raids by Peruvian slavers).
1886:Visitation by George S. Cook, Surgeon, United States Navy, aboard the USSMohican.
1888:Annexation by Chile.
The Society wishes these questions pursued by investigators:
How were the colossal statues crafted? Transported? Were they made by ancestors of current inhabitants or an earlier, vanished race?
What caused the uniform collapse of the colossi?
Is the script noted by González related to other known writing? What has been recorded in this script?
Are natives related to other Polynesians or to South Americans?
What is the diet?
What is the family structure? The current ratio of men to women?
Is or has polygamy been practiced?
It is March 1912.
Through the gray Atlantic the White Star liner steams forward. Three thick chimneys crown the boat. Just beyond the compass bridge, past the captain’s quarters, Alice and Elsa share a small wood-paneled cabin. Their new leather vanity cases rest on the dresser; on the butler table sits Pudding’s cage. The room is elegant, tidy. It is in Edward’s cabin, one door down, that they have jammed the crates of tents and saddlery and reference books. “Our equipment is rather important, and we can’t have it walloped around in the cargo bay,” he explains to any passengers who see him emerging, harried, from this maze of gear. Brushing off his jacket, he says, “We are going on an expedition.”
In fact, at any opportunity, Edward speaks of the trip. At breakfast, at tea, as he passes the sugar across the finely laid table, he says, “Did we mention that after this we are making our way to the South Pacific?” Sometimes he asks, “Do you have family in Boston?” or “Is it business that takes you to Massachusetts?” merely to await the same question, so that he can respond, “Boston is a mere starting point for us!” He converses with architects, with American steel magnates, with lonely Cambridge dowagers, displaying with strangers, notes Elsa, an ease he is unable to muster with her.
On the fifth day, when they awake to thunderclouds bruising the horizon, they retreat to the red-carpeted lounge for a game of bezique. There they are approached by an elderly man who announces that he is Andreas Lordet of Belgium, that he is an experienced traveler, that for three years he administered the famous Lemaire copper mine in the Congo, and that he intends, for a brief interval, to join them.
The man sits; he looks wearily at the rain-smeared windows. He is waiting, he says, for his wife to join him. Then slowly, meticulously, he scans them: Edward first, then Elsa, then Alice. His eyes rest a moment on Alice, intrigued by the wad of playing cards held tightly in her hand, and by the way she holds the cards out in front of her, as though unsure of whether to offer them, magicianlike, or to embrace them. With a quick flash of his wrinkled hand, he summons the waiter and orders a gin.
“Congo,” Edward says. “I myself spent extensive time in German East Africa. I am an anthropologist and we are now, all of us, in fact, beginning an expedition to Easter Island.”
“Ah, yes. Anthropology,” the man ponders. “Hmmmph.” His eyes close, opening only when he hears the waiter approach with his drink. “Merci,” he tells the man, followed by a long swallow of gin.
“Of course,” says Edward, “the South Pacific is vastly different from the African continent.”
“Africa! Yes!” he exclaims. Then, eagerly, he begins the story of his experience with what he calls “savage discontent”—a phenomenon about which he hopes soon to write a scholarly paper. An anthropologist such as Edward would no doubt take interest in his observations. And on he goes with tales of stolen revolvers and bands of natives, of poisoned arrows raining from the sky, finishing each story with a swig of gin, as though still astonished at his ability to survive such danger. “Bien s?r.” He thumps his emptied glass on the table beside him. “Yet, here I am. You see?” He knocks his fist against his chest. “One must have strength. Courage.Resolve. And then such uprisings will merely be”—his hand flaps in the air—“a cure for boredom.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier,” asks Elsa, drawing a new card from the table, “to stay in Belgium and go to the theater?”
He turns to Edward. “Theater?”
Elsa reorders her cards with great concentration. She is tired of playing audience to this tedious man.
“Well. What you say of courage is indeed true,” says Edward. “The foreigner has many new and unsettling experiences. The change in diet alone can be a cause for alarm.”
“Théatre?”the man repeats, giving the word its full French pronunciation.
You sound like a brute, Elsa wants to tell him. Uprisings as a form of amusement! She’s heard enough. And why must Edward be so diplomatic? She knows he agrees with her—in his own book, Edward emphasized the need for imperial subjects to respect the peoples of their colonies. But a row? Edward won’t have it. She’d like to remind him of his own book’s final chapter, “Toward Greater Understanding,” her favorite: the one part of his writing that made her think Edward, in addition to collecting and compiling data, harbored a deep sympathy for his subjects. But now she wonders at the sincerity of his feelings.
Suddenly, the man looks past Elsa. “Hélène!”
Elsa turns. A finely dressed woman of seventy or so strides toward them. A thick gold necklace clings to her chest. Three broad bangles anchor each of her wrists. Edward rises, and Andreas conducts introductions. Finally, the woman sits carefully on the edge of her seat and turns to her husband.
“Nous parlons de voyages,”he says.
Edward says, “We are headed for the South Pacific. On an expedition for the Royal Geographic Society.”
“Ah,le Pacifique du sud. Well, you must beware of mosquitoes. You have lots of quinine, I hope. You can never have too much quinine.”
Do these people, Elsa wonders, love nothing more than to alert others of danger?
“Quinine?” asks Alice, who Elsa sees has accumulated almost an entire deck of cards in her fist.
“Qui-nine,” answers Madame Lordet. “You use it for the treatment of the malarial fever. It is taken from the bark of a tree. A dose of three drops at bedtime is best.”
“Fever?!” Alice’s hands slacken, and several cards flutter to the floor.
The woman’s head tilts contemplatively to one side.
“We have tents with nets,” Elsa says. “Mosquito nets. Don’t worry, Allie.”
“Fever?”
“Ma chérie.Do not be worried,” says Madame Lordet, her voice gentle. “You will just tell the mosquito to go away and leave you alone! You will say ‘Shoo,’ and he will fly off!”
Alice smiles, tosses her cards to the side.
“I think somebody has won the game!” Madame Lordet leans toward Elsa, necklace jangling, and whispers, “My niece in Antwerp”—she shakes her head with regret—“is just the same.”
After the card game, Madame Lordet offers to take Alice to the parlor to cheer the Ping-Pong matches. “My Adèle just adores watching the balls go back and forth,” she says, lifting a pale finger to illustrate the motion.
“Well,” Elsa begins politely, “Alice has a variety of interests more stimulating than ball-watching.” How tiresome, though, the endless assumptions. “You might ask her to draw your portrait. She’s quite a good artist.”
“An artist!” The woman smiles, shakes her head in wondrous delight, as though before her has pranced a monkey in a top hat. “Merveilleux.”
Elsa strains a smile and offers a polite good-bye, planting a kiss on Alice’s honeyed scalp. From the table she picks upOn the Origin of Species and tucks it in the crook of her arm. Edward smiles; the book, a handsome first edition, was his wedding gift to her. The night before leaving England, he presented her with a collection of Darwin: five books, each bound in burgundy leather, the spines lettered in gold, and her new, married initials—EPB—embossed on all the title pages. She has been carrying this volume from her cabin to the deck to the lounge without a moment, yet, for study. Now she can steal a few minutes.
Elsa climbs the steps to the boat’s upper deck, but no sooner has she reached the windy promenade than she thinks of turning back. She is sickened by the idea of this woman dragging Alice through the parlor like a pet. Elsa tries to shake the image from her mind. Her father always admonished her for this—her desire to argue Alice’s abilities. Alice was Alice, he said, no matter how she was perceived. Ignorance wounded only the ignorant. But for Elsa, it was a matter of defending Alice’s honor. Even if each contemptuous stare could be disregarded, she couldn’t help but feel that left unchecked, the weight of them all might soon press against Alice. And part of Elsa suspected her father was simply too tired, too old, for outrage. She had seen him outraged just once in her life: She had been nine years old, sitting in Dr. Chapple’s London consultation room with her father and Alice, listening as the doctor explained the medical specifications of amentia—state of restricted potentiality . . . arrest of cerebral development . . . insufficient cortical neurons—at the time, an endless muddle of syllables to Elsa, but words she would hear again for years to come. What Elsa did understand was that Dr. Chapple said there were places they could send Alice—the Royal Albert Asylum in Lancaster, the Sandlebridge School for the Feeble-Minded—places that would accommodate, and this phrase etched itself in Elsa’s mind,mental defectives . Elsa finally slid forward in her chair and asked what to her seemed the most relevant question: “Can you fix her?”
“I’m afraid, my dear girl,” said the doctor, removing his glasses for this final pronouncement, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “the condition of amentia, though its external manifestations can be reduced through a proper balance of stimulus and rest, is both permanent and untreatable.”
Her father nodded silently.
The doctor then began scribbling. “However, take one part caraway seeds, one part ginger and salt, and spread it on bread with a touch of butter. This has been shown successful at temporarily quelling mild episodes of hysteria.” Her father’s gaze was fixed on the floor, so Elsa accepted the doctor’s paper.
Once they were outside, on the steps of Dr. Chapple’s office, after the door had closed behind them, her father raised his hand and slapped Elsa’s face. He had never done this before.
“Understand this,” he said. “Alice does not need to be fixed. She needs to be cared for. And you will not now or ever refer to any of Alice’s behavior as a problem or defect. Do I need to repeat myself?”
Elsa’s head dropped—she had meant only to see if they could help Alice. She refused to answer. Was she not the one who always fought on Alice’s behalf? Suddenly a shriek erupted beside her—Alice, hand raised above her head, face flushed with anger, began to twist and spin, until the propeller of her arm landed with a firm thwack on their father’s stomach. She swung back for another strike, but their father caught her wrist. His eyes were mapped with capillaries.
“Alice. My little Alice.”
But Alice only glared at him, the vein on her forehead plump with rage, her narrow chest rising and falling with exertion. He released her wrist and Alice again launched her arm.
“Allie,” said Elsa, grabbing her. “It’s all right.”
Their father stared down at them as though searching for the just response. This was too much for him; Elsa could see it. It was the first time he had shown such exhaustion, such confusion. He shook his head, then walked down the steps toward the busy London street.
“Elsa, I hit him!” Alice wrenched free from Elsa’s grip. “I hit Papa. Did you see me?” She sprang to her toes and began to bounce.
Tugging Alice by the sleeve, Elsa hurried down the steps until they flanked him. “Father,” said Elsa. “Please . . . Father.”
He did not stop; he did not even look at them.
“I’m sorry, Father.”
“Hmmnn? What is it?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Elsa’s sorry!” shouted Alice.
He seemed disoriented. “You must catch your breath, Elsa. Calm yourself. Why have you let yourself get flustered?”
“Elsa’s sorry!”
“Elsa? Sorry? What on earth for?” He glanced up at the sky and sighed, a long, tired sound that seemed to have taken years to work its way out of him. “No. No one needs to be sorry. No one. Let’s get home before dark.”
And together they walked down the sidewalk in silence, as though nothing had happened.
On the boat’s rain-washed promenade, Elsa hears the rumble of the engine, the sharp voice of a mother forbidding her child to run, the murmurs of a couple leaning on the railing to watch the sun break through the clouds. The rain has stopped, but a cold wind sweeps the deck. She trails her fingertips along the chilly rail and surveys the horizon. No England; no Europe. Is it really possible to leave the past behind? To begin anew? But Elsa knows all too well this yearning in herself. When leaving home for her first governess post, she had imagined she could start afresh, could unhinge her former frame of solemnity and let herself curl into a new, carefree girl, the kind she had always envied. But the frame was too old, and, despite her hopes, despite her efforts, it held firm.
Seating herself on a dry bench, Elsa opensOn the Origin of Species. She’s read some of this before—her father, of course, had a copy; and often it could be found in the libraries of her employers. But this isher volume. Burgundy leather, beautiful. She smiles at the thought that she can crease the pages. She can mark the margins. She can drip tea across the pristine ivory pages. “First edition” means little; what matters is that the book is her own, and as such should bear traces of her use. With this in mind, Elsa turns to the introduction and with her thumb and forefinger nicks the page’s upper corner. There. She looks up, hoping, perhaps, that someone has seen her. A silly gesture, she knows, but it fills her with a sudden satisfaction, as if this small act of destruction, of rebellion, has for a moment offset the prudence of all her other choices.
Elsa begins reading, and with her pencil underlines passages of interest. This, too, gives her great pleasure, and she wonders if some primitive instinct is at work. Her pupils always scrawled their names on lesson books—front covers, back covers, random pages—as if they had an unwavering need to document the event of their learning, to mark the territory their minds traveled. Am I no different, she wonders, than a schoolgirl hoping that a few possessions will remind the world of my existence?
She reads on.
There is a striking parallelism in the laws of life throughout time and space; the laws governing the succession of forms in past times being nearly the same with those governing at the present time. . . .
The words seem to flow through her.Past times, present time —yes, there is a largeness to it all, something beyond her, beyond this vast steamer and this endless ocean. Elsa pencils a note, turns the page, and suddenly senses herself smiling. I love this, she thinks. I feel like a true scholar. All those grammar and geography and mathematics lessons gone—here is Darwin; here is an amazing theory.
A burst of laughter distracts her—farther down the deck two young women in leghorn hats are strolling. Their eyes are locked on a young man reading, and as they pass him, there is another burst of laughter that draws his attention from the magazine. This brief game won, the women lean into each other, whispering, their hats forming a canopy above them. There is an ease in these women, a carelessness Elsa envies. She has never been like that. Since childhood, she has lived in constant vigilance. Always she has had Alice to look after, her father to tend to. Alice needed her patience. Her father, her obedience. And when she became a governess, Elsa begrudgingly acquired the most difficult, for her, of dispositions—humility. Over time, these duties had produced in her a seriousness that made others uneasy. Made men uneasy. She was not, after all, ugly; her skin was smooth, her hair chestnut and silken, though a little thin. When she looked at herself in the mirror, her features seemed soft and balanced, and she thought she must be as pleasant to look at as the next girl. Still, the tension in her demeanor made men look past her to more lighthearted girls. Even Max, who shared her gravity, had drawn back from it at first.
Several days after his return from Kiel, he came to say hello in the schoolroom. Elsa was at the table with Otto and Huberta, reviewing English prepositions, when he walked over, extended one hand, and laid it for a moment on each child’s head. Looking down at their lesson books, he asked Otto, the oldest, in English, “And how do you like the new governess?”
“Sehr gut, Papa.”
“Have we brought her all the way from England to help you speak German?” He turned to Elsa. “Have you settled in well?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Prepositions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.”
And with that, he left. An entire month passed before he spoke to her again. But she thought his disinterest a sign she was doing her job well. The staff was the foundation of a household—best unseen.
Their next conversation had to do with a pocket watch Huberta had taken from her father’s office and, when Elsa tried to retrieve it, let tumble down the marble staircase. When Elsa picked it up, she saw the glass face had been cracked. And rather than have Huberta—who was hopelessly fitful and clumsy, who sometimes reminded her of Alice—disciplined, Elsa told the head maid she had broken it herself and that the repair costs should be taken from her wages.
The next day he interrupted her while she was giving lessons. He said there was a debt to be discussed.
“I’m sorry, sir?” Elsa closed the lesson books and rested her hands in her lap.
“My watch. What has inspired you to pay for the repair?”
Huberta, whose English was progressing rapidly, squirmed in her seat.
“I don’t understand.” But suddenly Elsa did: The watch was already damaged when Huberta snatched it. “Ah, yes, sir. I apologize.”
He lingered for a moment, looking at his children and the books, his eyes resting on Elsa.
“It was given to me when I was thirteen.”
“What was, sir?”
“The watch, it belonged to my father.”
“Fine, sir.”
“It has meaning for me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“For one who teaches conversation, your English is quite limited.”
Elsa did not like to be goaded. This was a danger of her position she had resolved to guard herself against. Employers were moody. Some days—if it was rainy, if they had not slept well—they might decide to draw out the details of your life, or offer theirs. Afterward they feared you would take it too far, abandon your work and gossip all day, and so they grew colder, struck a pose of even greater superiority. If you had let yourself believe in the friendship, this was a blow. It was easier, and safer, never to test that path.
“I suppose so,” she said.
“Very well, then. Continue with your lessons,” he said. “And if the urge strikes, do teach them some compound sentences.”
They did not speak again until the day she received a letter from her father about the drafting of the Feeble-Minded Control Bill. Elsa had gone to her favorite garden bench to read, and had become visibly upset. When Max, out walking, saw her, when he asked what was the matter and motioned if he might sit down, Elsa was too unhappy, too preoccupied, to respond. Her mind was with Alice, and so when he sat beside her, that was of whom she spoke—she described Alice’s episodes, her abilities, the termamentia, the details of the legislation. Elsa’s openness risked impropriety, but Max didn’t seem to mind. He seemed intrigued by Alice’s predicament, as though it were a great riddle offered up for him to solve. He stroked his beard and stared straight ahead as Elsa spoke. The wind rustled the tree above them, and as the sun set, long shadows, like awnings, fell from the hedges. There was a sense of sanctuary on that bench, and Elsa understood very clearly that his empathy for her could be expressed only there. It was her understanding of this, she suspected, that put him at ease.
Even after other encounters, after he began leading the children on long hikes that he insisted she join, for hours teaching them the names of the trees and shrubs they passed, even after he had sought her out several times, alone, when his wife, Margarete, was calling on friends, Elsa never behaved toward him as anything but her employer. It was a friendship, a simple companionship, which neither dreamed would escalate. They could talk easily, and they liked each other, though Elsa wasn’t sure at first what it was she liked in him. Max was attractive, but she never thought herself greatly impressed by that. He was intelligent, but Elsa had often met intelligent men at the university. Max, however, was the first person she’d ever met who needed no looking after. From time to time, she would overhear him lose his temper in some distant wing of the house, his voice rising for a moment about a telegram belatedly delivered, a door left unlocked, but it would subside quickly. He never looked upset, never tired, never nervous, and it was a bit of a joke among the servants that his self-sufficiency drove them mad. In him dwelled an awesome strength to which Elsa was drawn, though by attraction or envy, she couldn’t say. And then, unexpectedly, she fell in love. She sometimes wondered if being so far from Alice had allowed her indiscretion. Had Alice been with her, it would never have happened. Of that she feels certain.
But Elsa is happy, now, to have Alice with her. And gradually her doubts concerning the trip are subsiding. Edward has promised they will turn back if the journey proves too much for Alice, but so far it thrills her. In Southampton, as the ship set out, she hooted and waved to the harbor crowd. She has explored and drawn each level of the steamer. And the amenities of travel—the books, the bags—enchant her. Several times a day, Alice opens her small leather satchel, examines the contents, then seals and stows it beneath the bed. In it she has arranged a comb and looking glass, a small pair of scissors for Pudding’s nails, a photograph of their father, the perfumed silk sachet that Elsa bought her, a bundle of chalk and crayons fastened with blue ribbon, a pair of binoculars, the silver candy bowl from Edward’s sitting room (which she scrambles to position on the dresser each time before Edward is permitted to enter their cabin—“Not yet!” she cries as he lingers in the doorway, sure to keep his palms held firmly over his eyes), and, despite Elsa’s insistence that she would have no need for it, a German-English dictionary—the same item Alice watched Elsa pack the first time she left home.
Of course, the longest, most arduous part of the voyage is still ahead. Tropical climates, strange languages, peoples of unknown dispositions. The potential for danger is, Elsa knows, quite real. But wasn’t there danger in England? The whole business of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-Minded, their endless articles and proposals, the bill they tried to slip through Parliament to mandate institutionalization—it terrified her. Her father, in his last months, had posted three letters to theDaily Telegraph decryingThe Journal of the Eugenics Education Society and their claims that sterilization could prevent the spread of idiocy. “Spread!” he coughed from his bed, hurling the journal to the floor. “Do they think this is smallpox?” Even more unsettling was one of the names on the masthead of theEugenics Review —Dr. William Chapple—the man they had turned to years before to diagnose Alice’s condition.
When Elsa and Edward were clearing her father’s office, in her father’s desk drawer she found the last few volumes of theReview. Why, she wondered, did he hold on to them? Did he think that in his drawer he might control their contents? How typical of Father to assume his constant obsession, his ten-page letters, would solve the problem. Never was he guilty of indolence, never of surrender. His hard work, however, could be so misdirected. Textiles—a serious investment, but dreadfully ill-advised. Looking around at the dusty books, the boxes of papers—the bulk of her inheritance—Elsa thought: I am penniless. It would take more than her vigilance to make sure Alice didn’t find herself in the hands of maniacal doctors. Elsa pulled the volumes from the drawer and scanned the clutter for a waste-basket.
“Please, Miss Pendleton,” said Edward from across the room. “Do have a rest. I’d be pleased to deal with this untidiness. This sort of thing is always trying on one’s feelings.”
“I’m fine, Professor Beazley,” she said, the coolness in her voice obviously startling him out of his tender moment. He seemed disconcerted by her lack of bereavement, by the calm she had shown at the funeral. Why did Edward and everybody else expect she would be consumed by emotion? If she hadn’t so many other concerns, she might have been. “I’m merely looking for a place to dispose of this idiotic rubbish.” Elsa glanced around; everything, actually, looked like a trash bin—suitcases and crates stuffed with papers, books, and broadsides. Finally Elsa tore up one volume at a time and let the pieces tumble to the floor. “There. Now I won’t mistake them for anything worth saving.”
“I understand your irritation. The Eugenics Education Society. An awful business.”
“Father no doubt told you all about it.”
“Some. Yes.” Edward shook his head. “It is an outrage, really. This is what Britain’s medical experts concoct? Not a cure, not a remedy, not even an attempt to ease the discomforts of those who are troubled. But isolation? Imprisonment? Sterilization?” His hands flew up. “Good God.”
This sudden passion surprised Elsa—Edward had been silent through the morning as they filled the crates. But the contagion of his anger swept her; and she was happy to be permitted a display of frustration.
“They’re frightened fools, Professor Beazley. Not a single doctor in eighteen years has been able to explain what happened to Allie. Over twenty so-called professionals consulted, and none of them could say if she began this way; if she was injured in birth. The doctors can’t move one foot toward identifying the source of such differences, and so what do they want? They want all those different people to disappear, because their existence reminds the doctors of their own incompetence.”
“It is a case of Britain’s sense of nationhood gone too far. This focus on the good of the political unit rather than the good of the individual. It’s an appalling feature of our culture. Among the Hoonai and the Mugundi of East Africa, those born with impediments or unusual features are seen as children of the gods given to humans to look after.”
“Perhaps I should take Allie to East Africa.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Pendleton. We won’t let anything happen to Alice.”
Yes, Elsa thinks, even then he said “we.”We won’t let anything happen . . . Before he had proposed, as though anticipating Alice would be his concern. And how coldly she had behaved. Could she have known he would help her out of the very situation that made her act with such detachment?
When he had spoken of this journey to the South Pacific, he spoke of Alice’s protection, of the safety of foreign shores. “Elsa, both you and your father have always made certain that Alice was cared for by the people who love her. This voyage—well, it most certainly won’t resemble England—but it will be with her family, with the people who care for her. It will be good for her.Desideratum . No risk of horrid legislation taking her from you, from us.”
He was right.
Only Elsa hopes the people of Easter Island are as forgiving as the Hoonai and the Mugundi.
Evenings, they work in the ship’s lounge.
“Before we even arrive we shall be experts,” says Edward, seated on the edge of a velvet sofa, sorting papers. He has boxes of correspondence from Royal Geographic Society members. Others, reading of the expedition in the papers, have written to offer services; thirty-two steward applications alone clutter his pile. Geologists have requested rock specimens from each port of call. Some correspondents have provided theories—I must inform you, Professor Beazley, that your mystery island is part of the lost continent of Lemuria (see enclosed map), of which I am an original inhabitant;others, warnings—“And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. And all the flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast and of every creeping thing, that creepeth upon the earth and every man.”You venture thousands of miles when the answer to your “mystery” is right there in the Lord’s Scripture? Do not incite His wrath!
Separating the letters of immediate use has fallen to Elsa. But it is like searching for a clover in a field of grass; theories and warnings obscure each relevant fact. Yet she soon finds herself reading on even after she has extracted the data.I have always wanted to travel myself. I once dreamed of an island in the Pacific. My son, taken last year by the consumption, wanted to be an archaeologist. This glimpse into lives she will never encounter—it is just one more door of novelty the expedition opens. So leisurely, to faint tango staccatos drifting from the ballroom below, she compiles a list of Polynesian phrases.Hello, peace, horse, food, freshwater —in Tahitian, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Tongan. She also details the island’s climate, its average rainfall and temperatures. Domestic plants and animals get their own list. And from this data her mind begins to form a picture of their mysterious destination: grassy slopes, hundreds of grazing sheep, strong winds hurling in from the sea.
“I don’t have a book! Why don’t I have a book?” Alice, seated on the floor, dutifully unfolding the letters for Elsa’s pile, stops her work. She focuses on Elsa. “Alice must have a book.”
“But you’ve your very own journal, Allie,” Elsa says.
“I do. I have my own journal. What do I put in it?”
“Anything you like, Alice,” Edward says warmly, looking up from the mess of papers before him. His work relaxes him.
“Pictures. Why, you should be the official expedition artist,” says Elsa.
“My book is in the room. I want to get it.”
Their cabin is only yards away, and Elsa tells Alice she may walk, slowly, to the room, retrieve her book, and return immediately. In a flash Alice is gone. Elsa closes her book and watches the narrow passageway. When Alice reappears, she has her journal in one hand, Pudding’s cage in the other.
“Allie.”
“He wanted to see the boat!”
“Set him down, there, beside the sofa. This is a lounge. If he begins to caw, we’ll have to take him back.”
“Keep quiet, Pudding. Or Elsa’s going to take you away.”
Alice dramatically perches herself in a chair, mimicking Elsa’s studious posture, and spreads the blank book in her lap.
“What will you draw in it?” Elsa asks.
“Who is on the expedition?”
“We are. You, me, and Edward.”
A mischievous smile curls Alice’s mouth. “Three people.”
“Three indeed, Allie.”
Alice carefully counts three pages. She looks up at Elsa. “Portraits.”
“Excellent. Three portraits.” As Alice’s pencil leaps into the book, a young couple, elegantly clad, strolls past.
“Good evening!” says Edward, and the couple return his greeting, but Elsa can see, in the way their eyes search Edward and his clutter of papers, then Alice, herself, and Pudding’s sparkling cage, that they are unsure of what to make of this group before them. Pudding squawks, and the woman grabs the man’s arm.
“A bird,” the man says. “Just a bird, my dear.”
“Allie,” cautions Elsa.
“Pudding,” scolds Alice.
“I told you we would have to take him back to the room.”
“What’s in your book, Elsa?”
“Allie.”
“What are you writing in there?”
“Words for us to use when we meet people who don’t speak our language.”
“Put some in my book.”
“Very well.” Elsa takes the book from Alice’s lap and writes:
Iorana: Hello
Ahi: Fire
Ana: Cave
“Now study those words so that you can use them when we arrive. Everybody is going to want to talk to you.”
Alice smiles, then slides Elsa’s notebook from her lap. “You need drawings.”
Below them, another song begins. A slow song, with violins. Elsa imagines all the well-dressed couples clasping hands, swaying from side to side. She imagines the two young women she saw on deck wearing long white gowns, their eyes seeking out the man with the magazine. She sees the Belgian couple gliding across the dance floor, the woman’s gold necklace lit by the porthole’s moonlight. But when she looks at Alice, Elsa brushes the image away.
“Drawings. Yes. I do need them, don’t I? Do you think you could make some for me?”
“Can he stay?” she begs, looking at Pudding.
“All right, Allie. He can stay.”
After two weeks at sea, they arrive in Boston Harbor and Elsa says a silent good-bye to the vast liner, the elegant strangers, the ballroom and game room and canopied promenades. Standing in the hubbub of the dock, fortressed by their crates, they watch the waves of splendid greetings: valises dropped, arms flung open, names trilled,Charles! Clarissa! Father! Trunks are tumbled into the boots of motorcars. Skirts are gathered in small fists as one black-buckled shoe, then another, sidesteps into the backseat. Doors thud closed. The crowds thin, and cars rumble away. How strange, thinks Elsa, to see people move from one container to another. From ship to motorcar. And soon, no doubt, to flat, to house. She has always liked being out of doors, riding her Humber or strolling through Kew Gardens. Motion soothes her, makes her feel a sense of progress and freedom. The evening after her father died, after she learned the details of his finances, Elsa took Alice’s bicycle (her own still suffered the wounds of Alice’s hatpin) and rode through the darkening streets, cycling faster than ever before, her legs burning with exertion, as though she could pedal through her mounting sense of doom, could hurl herself forward, over it, into a new bright life.
And now motionis taking her into a new life. They have crossed the Atlantic and will soon sail the coast of two continents. How Elsa would love to tell these people:We won’t be snatched away by a motorcar!We won’t be tucked into narrow beds in tidy homes! We are adventurers! And she stands amid the clang and creak of the docks, smiling, her hand resting on a crate, until up walks a ruddy-faced young man who introduces himself as Ryan Fitzpatrick.
“Of Fitzpatrick and Sons?” asks Edward.
“Son number four. Best for last. Here to get you to your schooner.”
He engages five porters and leads them down a long pier. Soon they are before the fifty-two-foot schooner Edward arranged for from England. It is a four-year charter agreement, subsidized by the Royal Geographic Society, and will allow them two years on the island and a year for travel on either end.
“Have a look,” Edward says while he reviews a thick set of contracts with Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Elsa guides Alice down four steps, into the long main cabin. Paneled in a thickly lacquered blond wood, the space is bright and cheery. It is divided into a galley—with a stove and an icebox—and a dining quarter. The sitting area has two high-backed benches at the far end. This entire cabin is no larger than the attic rooms she was given by her employers. It is smaller than she imagined—but there is always the deck, where she will spend most of her time. Behind the stairs a thin wooden door opens into a spacious square cabin, the captain’s quarters, with one large bed. She and Alice will sleep here.
“Do you like it?” Elsa asks. “Just like we had in Father’s house when we were little.”
Alice looks the room over. “Where will Pudding sit? At home he sits on my dresser. There’s no dresser here.”
“Perhaps we could put a hook in. Let his cage hang.”
But Alice is already on the bed, crawling across the mattress, pushing at a hatch directly above. “An escape route!”
“Careful, Allie.”
She shoves the glass until, hinges creaking with resistance, it bursts open. “Look, Elsa! Look!” Alice’s head disappears above deck, and in a moment a squeal comes. She ducks back into the cabin.
“Allie, you mustn’t go sticking your head out like that. You could hurt yourself. And who knows how sturdy those hinges are?”
But Alice’s face is red. She leans toward Elsa, eyes wide, and whispers. “I saw Beazley.”
Edward hires two Irishmen, Kierney and Eamonn, as crew to help him sail to the island and then to return on their own to Chile. The society will arrange crew for the return voyage to England. The men will sleep in the V-berth at the boat’s front end. They are young, leather-skinned, and brawny, but come recommended for their reliability and their experience. They brag of the ports they have seen—the Chinese vendors in San Francisco, the thieves in Acapulco—as they heave from dock to deck the endless stores of coal and water, the provisions of paper, ink, tea, biscuits, fresh meat, the buckets of fruits and vegetables, the bags of bandages and cameras. Kierney, constantly flashing Elsa a gap-toothed grin, pauses to examine each piece of equipment as he carries it belowdecks.
“Look here, Eamonn. Have you ever seen this here thing?” He is holding a large vernier caliper, flipping it up, then down. “You think it might be for a doctor? For surgery? Holding the head in place while he cuts ’em open?”
“Just put it aft and tie it down so it don’t jump up at you when we set off. You see that hold? You see all that empty space in there? We gotta fill it. You and me. And chattering ain’t gonna get the work done.”
“Aye,” he says to Elsa with a huff, “he sounds just like me mum!”
After days of provisioning, packing, and checking the boat, on April sixth the men set the sails, and Elsa and Alice watch the boat come to life. Edward, proud and handsome in his new white suit, assumes a regal perch behind the wheel. Above them, the sails fill with the breeze, and the schooner departs the waters of Boston Harbor.
Carried by a steady wind, the first week is smooth sailing. Elsa sits on deck and studies the rigging and the equipment, learning the names: windlass, Aladdin cleat, Charley Noble. She adjusts to the peculiar rhythms of life at sea, the occasional swing of the boom, the swift hauling of heavy, wet lines. She accustoms herself to the tedious unfastening and refastening of the teakettle and biscuit tin each afternoon—everything has to be tied down so as not to fly across the cabin should the boat lurch, a lesson she learns quickly when, two days from Boston, a neglected melon thwacks her in the back.
Off Cape Hatteras, a sudden gale catches the boat. Slashing rains and winds ransack the deck, and as they heave to for hours, Alice races through the main cabin, clinging intermittently to Edward and Elsa, then vomiting over a navigation chart.
“Aye there, little lass! A boat is no place for this here kind of mischief!” shouts Kierney, wiping the soiled charts, fanning the stench from his face. “I’ll gladly suffer the rain if it means a breath of good air.”
Alice curls up beneath the steps. “Bad Alice,” she mumbles. “Bad Alice. No mischief.” And then her eyes retreat to their private domain.
“Yes, do get yourself a breath of fresh air. And take your time,” says Edward, gesturing toward the deck.
Kierney doesn’t budge.
“No air, then? I suggest you collect yourself or you will have more than ample time to explore Recife. I think Brazil would suit you quite well.”
Elsa can’t help but smile at this—Edward is standing firm. And for the sake of Alice. In the dim cabin Edward catches her smile, and lets it spread, ever so slightly, to himself.
June finds them off the northeast coast of Brazil. Weeks from the port at Recife, they are stilled in doldrums, fighting the northward flow of the Guiana current. But for a few grainy flaws on its surface, the sea stretches in stillness. The air is hot and thick and the sun itself seems to vibrate. For days on end, sitting on deck, Elsa watches the canvas squares hang motionless, her mind lulled by the stagnancy, her thoughts turning to her letter to Max. She sees him unfolding the pages, examining each phrase like a code, reading it aloud, measuring its sound. She has seen him study dinner invitations as if they were riddles. But will it be his first thought of her in months? Have his duties diverted him so completely? After all, she has been able to put him mostly out of her mind. Only in this sluggishness does she find herself closing her eyes and thinking of him, even though she doesn’t want to. It only saddens her, a sadness that seems to agitate Alice. Sometimes, opening her eyes to the bright light of the deck, Elsa finds Alice sitting across the bow, staring accusingly, as if she knows Elsa’s mind has been wandering to places she is not invited.
These looks of accusation always remind Elsa of what happened with Rodney Blackwell. Years before, when she was sixteen, Rodney, the son of the president of the Zoological Society, had briefly courted Elsa. He took her to cricket matches, to Kew Gardens, to the Royal Victoria Hall to seeMacbeth , and once, after much pleading, he took her for a ride in one of the new motor taxis. They enjoyed, in a sedate way, each other’s company. Rodney liked to discuss Descartes’Meditations or Irish Home Rule or the failings of parliamentary government; ideas and issues thrilled him. He felt noemotional attachment to her, Elsa knew. A pure intellectual curiosity led him through life. As a child, he had, for the sake of satisfying his interest, smeared honey on his hand and provoked a bee to sting him.
One evening, standing before the door of her father’s house, he removed his hat and said, “Elsa, I should like to try a brief kiss before we part.” Elsa had never been kissed, and she, like Rodney, had, if not the passion, at least the curiosity for such an experience. “Very well,” she said. He stepped forward and pressed his tense mouth against hers. She could smell his hair, his cologne, could feel his cold nose against her own. When he stepped back, she said, “Fine. Something new. Good night, then.” Elsa eased the heavy door closed behind her, tiptoed up the stairs to the bedroom, and saw Alice, in her white nightgown, seated on the window ledge. Alice was silent for a moment, then raced toward her. “I’m Rodney! I’m Rodney!”
“Allie! You’ll wake Father.” Elsa’s voice was sharp.
Alice retreated.
“I’m sorry, Allie. Come here. Quietly.”
“Why can’t I kiss you?”
Elsa looked at Alice’s hair, loose from its braids, a wreath of curls around her small face. Her brow was creased with worry. “Do you want to kiss me?” Elsa asked.
Alice nodded.
“All right,” said Elsa.
Alice paused, as though she didn’t trust this concession. Then slowly, she stepped toward Elsa. “I’m going to be Rodney,” Alice said, eyes aglow, tucking a curl behind her ear. She straightened her nightgown, as though nervous, as though she really were Rodney, or another boy, asking to approach Elsa.
“Ready?” asked Elsa.
“Ready.” They were still several feet apart.
“Do you want me to come toward you?” Elsa asked. “Or shall you come toward me?”
Alice hesitated.
“Rodney came toward me.”
Alice sprung to the balls of her feet. “All right. All right. Elsa, close your eyes.”
“I’m closing my eyes.”
In the darkness, Elsa waited, listening to the hush of crumpled cotton, a slight sigh as Alice released the shadow of a mysterious thought into the night, and then the gentle creak of the floorboards beneath Alice’s feet. Alice’s warm breath bathed her face, and her lips, plump and moist, touched Elsa’s and withdrew. Then the lips returned, more confident, nestling against her own. A soft humming began and Elsa could feel the sound waves thrum through her cheeks. It was no different, she thought, from what she had done with Rodney. And it was a truer kiss. Gentle, loving. Her life had been full of such private, intimate concessions to Alice. As a child, Alice sometimes begged Elsa for a small taste of her chewed food; when Elsa began menstruating, Alice panicked when she found a drop of blood in the washroom and insisted Elsa show her where it had come from. Of these moments, Elsa told no one.
When Alice finally pulled away, Elsa opened her eyes. A wide grin lit Alice’s face.
“Did you like that?” she asked.
“I’ll have hundreds of kisses,” said Alice.
“Thousands, Allie.”
Elsa unclasped her dress in the dark room, poured herself a glass of water for the bedside. When they were both finally beneath their covers, Elsa whispered good night.
“Thousands,” mumbled Alice.
Then Elsa blew out the candle and pressed her cheek against the cold pillow.
After two weeks of floating aimlessly, a brief rain at last loosens from the sky. They all seize a bowl or cup and clamber on deck to catch the meager spray, their tongues lapping at the drops. Within minutes, however, the sky revokes its gift, offering instead another blast of heat, tinged now with oppressive humidity. Edward unbuttons his collar and steps below to check the stores. Moments later he returns with a look of concern. “We shall all halve our rations until we know we’ll make Recife in time.”
“What about Pudding?” Alice demands, gripping the gunwale to pull herself up. “He is supposed to have fresh water two times a day! Isn’t that right, Elsa? I’ve always given him water two times a day.” She squints at the sun with indignation.
Kierney, crouched on the foredeck, rolls his eyes and drinks the last of his rain-filled cup. “There’s a hierarchy at sea, Miss Pendleton. And birds, even birds who can saysuperior , ain’t at the top of it.”
“Pudding can have his water twice a day,” Elsa says. “It will be fine, Allie. For goodness’ sake,” she announces to the boat. “We are not going to run out of water.”
“I’ve seen it happen,” says Kierney. “You name the disaster, and I’ve seen it.”
“We shall be fine,” states Edward. “This is merely a precaution.” He turns to Alice. “The bird may take from my ration.”
For the first time, Elsa feels anxious. Could they really run out of water? She scolds herself for drinking too much, washing too liberally. She sets aside what’s left of her day’s ration for Alice. She can manage.
But the next morning when Elsa steps on deck, the small hairs on one side of her neck seem to tingle. The mysterious language she has been learning for months, the silent script of breezes, is now being written on her skin. As the cool air letters itself along her neck, Elsa calls below, “Allie, come quick! I think we’ve a trade wind coming.” By noon, the boat bounds away, tightening at all sides with new life.
In Brazil, they call in Recife, Bahia de Todos Os Santos, Cabral Bay, and Rio de Janeiro. With each anchoring there are visits from harbormasters, customs officers, and doctors. Ashore, Edward visits the consul and searches for the latest copies of theDaily Graphic andSpectator. Elsa arranges for fresh mutton and vegetables from the port chandlers. The boat provisioned, she and Alice stroll through the harbor, nibbling on a fried fish wrapped in newspaper, Alice’s feet dragging beneath her long skirts in their usual forgetfulness. Elsa loves these late afternoons, exploring the maze of shops and stalls and shanties bathed in the golden glow of tropical sunset. And at all times, she carries her notebook, now thick with information for the expedition.
She is pleased that Edward is allowing her to contribute. He seems to recognize to what lengths her father went teaching her science and history, and he often consults her:Elsa, do you recall in what year Brazil became a republic? She is hoping that, even though she lacks research experience, on the island he will permit her to help excavate, or interview, or detail the customs of the natives. But as they sail farther south, as she is constantly called on to cleat a line or find provisions or look up the Portuguese phrase for “clean bill of health,” as Alice is given the chore of mending sails, it becomes clear he will have no choice but to enlist her full capacities. Heneeds help.
Elsa knows Edward did his research in Africa alone. For two years he trekked from the coast to the interior, established a camp, recorded data on Kikuyu marriages, births, deaths, initiation rites. He catalogued medicinal herbs, hunted lions and leopards, collected and analyzed primate fossils—all without a single colleague. That was fifteen years ago; he was forty. Once he was also an excellent sailor. He even crewed for Sir Thomas Johnstone Lipton—five-time contender for the America’s Cup—a fact he now slips into their deck conversations with embarrassing frequency. But each morning as he pulls himself up the steps to the deck, wiping his brow, he looks somehow diminished, as if his body has betrayed his ability. In his younger days, he often sailed single-handed, and at a glance he knows what should be done—clip the gaff, run the jib, turn downwind.Sometimes, it even seems he can see his younger arms stretched before him, winching and cleating, phantom limbs. But always he passes along the task.
“Eamonn, let’s set the outer jib. And, Elsa, would you mind tightening the main?”
“Not at all.” Elsa cranks the winch with ease. Her arm muscles have hardened these past few months; her palms are now callused. “Are you feeling all right?” she asks.
“Excellent. Perfect. I’m in tip-top shape.”
“Because if you wanted to work belowdecks, Edward, I’m sure we can manage things up here.”
Her solicitude seems to hurt him, as if he imagined his few boasting words might, after all these months, have won her attention. He stares at the horizon. “As the captain, everything is my responsibility. I like to keep watch here, to look after things. In another few weeks, Elsa, you will be able to sail this schooner. You’ve become quite the mariner. It’s wonderful. I hadn’t expected it. That is not to say I did not think well of you, I admired all your abilities, but the life of the sea is not for everybody. I simply, well—” He halts; this half-compliment is tripping him. “What I mean to say is: You mustn’t concern yourself with me.”
In late August they reach the coast of Uruguay. They are again becalmed, slowed to thirty miles a day, drifting south on the Brazil current. They tack endlessly to no avail. On several occasions, when the current stills, they even drift north. From the hold wafts the odor of spoiling meat and oranges and fish. The boat has taken on a swarm of mosquitoes, and each evening, as they light the oil lamps in the cabin, there follows a frantic smacking and swatting, the burlesque of which might quell some tensions were it not for the threat of malaria. At bedtime, Elsa begins administering quinine.
During these windless weeks, everyone grows edgy. Edward, in particular, grows curt with the crew. While he is above deck late at night, Elsa can hear Kierney complaining to Eamonn.
“Perhaps if Captain Beazley and his wife shared a cabin he wouldn’t be hollering at us so.”
“Ah, clam it, Kierney. Drifting like this’ll make a saint testy.”
“Aye, but a saint would at least get a little squeeze from his wife.”
“The captain’s a gentleman,” says Eamonn. “That’s all, Kierney. You just dunno what that word means.”
“Gentleman. Lady. You can call it whatever, Eamonn. But if that’s what the moneybags call marriage, you won’t be seeing me trying to get meself into no aristocracy.”
Eamonn laughs. “You’ll be too busy trying to get yerself into a wife!”
“Shut up.”
As Elsa lies in the dark, listening to them, she thinks Kierney has, in fact, hit on the source of Edward’s agitation. Not the arrangement itself—Edward seems as willing as she is, given the circumstances, to postpone sharing a bed—but having a crew there to witness their arrangement, to judge it. Privacy vanished the moment they stepped on the boat. Surely Kierney and Eamonn, whom Elsa suspects spend their nights ashore rum-drunk with prostitutes, look down on Edward. A wife who sleeps with her sister—to them, it must seem ridiculous. And it doesn’t help that in Rio, the consul’s sister, partially deaf from a severe case of tonsillitis—“You see, dears, it makes no difference to me if someone is speaking Portuguese or English or Bantu!”—assumed Elsa and Alice were Edward’s daughters. Despite protestations and clarifications, in the haze of her deafness and several brandies she insisted that Elsa had Edward’s same lovely cheekbones.
To pass the slow days, Elsa and Alice sprawl across the bow for fish-spotting contests. Alice exaggerates incessantly.How many sharks, Alice dear? Fifty? Well, I hope we don’t fall in. They watch the occasional sea turtle glide by, and once in a while, when they pass through a shoal, a flying fish leaps aboard, sending Alice into hysterics. She giggles at the fish’s side fins thumping the deck, until, the creature’s distress beginning to alarm her, she finally tosses it back to the sea.
The cape pigeons also delight Alice. Edward hands her shreds of meat to throw to them and crouches behind his photo box to take several photographs of the birds. Then, with evident pleasure, he takes one of Alice, her arm extended over the gunwale, a smile stretched across her face as a gray speckled bird dives before her.
Alice and Elsa wear broad hats on deck, tie scarves about their heads when the wind is strong, but already their skin has darkened. At night Elsa rubs almond oil into their hands and arms and necks; they drift to sleep beside one another in a haze of salt air and marzipan.
At Buenos Aires, they meet supplies and letters from England. A week later, they put in briefly to water at Bahía Blanca—where native women make Elsa presents of penguin eggs and seashells—and then at Puerto Deseado. The tropical heat dissolves, replaced by clear and breezy days. But farther south, as they approach Patagonia, it grows colder; porpoises tumble about the bow, seals slither alongside. Two albatross, their wide white wings suspended in a gentle arc, wheel and circle about the stern, silently following the boat.
The patent log bobbing behind them registers speeds of six knots, but their sense of motion slows as daylight stretches interminably with summer’s approach. Elsa and Alice prepare breakfast at threeA .M.—dawn. When they retire at tenP .M., the sun still cuts through their cabin window. And late into the night Pudding stumbles dizzily on his perch.
“Are you sick, Pudding? Are you sick?”
“Good Alice. Bird superior. Bird. Bird.”
“Allie,” says Elsa, rising from the bed. “I think Pudding needs to sleep.”
“Oh, no, Elsa. He’s cross. I was watching the other birds and he thought I forgot all about him. But I didn’t, Pudding, I didn’t.”
“Look, Allie,” says Elsa as she drapes a shawl over the cage. “He just needs the dark so he knows to rest.”
Only Alice sees this as concealment; she rises every few minutes to peek behind the shawl. “Pudding,” she whispers, “where are you, Pudding?”
In bed at night, unable to sleep, Elsa thinks: Darkness is now like a blanket too small to cover one’s entire form. You try to wrap yourself safely within, but daylight still finds a naked spot toward which it creeps.
The daylight is misty-gray, foglike, shrouding the landscape in constant haze. Its damp chill reminds Elsa of London. So far away now. They have been at sea eight months, and it will be years before she sees England again. St. Albans’s clock tower, its Roman walls, the narrow streets where she cycled, her father’s house. For the first time, she misses home.
Farther south, antarctic breezes tear through the cabin. Elsa dresses Alice in gaiters and a second pair of bloomers. At night, they cuddle close, their teeth chattering into each other’s ears.
“Cooollddd,”Alice says in the darkness.
Elsa presses her mouth to Alice’s neck and releases a slow, hot breath. Alice giggles. Elsa finds a spot on Alice’s scalp and blows again. Elsa can feel the steam collect on her own lips. Alice squirms with delight.
“I’m your very own stove,” Elsa says.
Alice suddenly flips over. “Alice is a stove too.” Her eyes flicker with excitement. “Hot, hot, hot!” she squeals. Her lips stretch into an exaggerated yawn and find their way to Elsa’s neck. The blast is hot and moist. Then there is brief suction, a cold tickle on Elsa’s neck as Alice nestles her lips on the gulf of skin and breathes in. This must be what mothers feel, Elsa thinks, when they listen to the breath of their infants. The sound soothes her.
Then, on the night of October tenth, Kierney shouts below, “I see the light of Cape Virgins!”
They have arrived at the Straits of Magellan. Elsa knows enough of sailing now to realize how difficult they will be to pass—a long, narrow, zigzagging path of roiling ocean. Max had called the straits a seaman’s greatest adversary. “Scylla! Charybdis!” he said. “Odysseus was fortunate he did not have to sail through the Straits of Magellan!”
In Tierra del Fuego, they anchor for two nights, waiting for the wind to slacken. The British consul, interested in the expedition, invites them to dinner. “I have always meant to make the trip myself. Only my poor health prevents me. Asthma, you see.” Over brandy he remarks on the perils of the straits, suggesting they enlist a tramp to tow them through.
But Edward, discouraged by their recent drifting, now takes great pains to prove his ability. He sits up straight. “We shan’t be discouraged by minor danger.”
“Edward.” Elsa sets her glass down.
The consul grins. “Ah, you see? The ladies often have ideas of their own.”
“Elsa,” says Edward. “We’re not amateurs. I’ve sailed with Lipton, considered one of the best. I hope you have some faith in my judgment in these matters.”
“Neither my faith nor your judgment is in question,” Elsa says flatly, aware she is spoiling the mood. The consul, to her right, shifts in his chair. “I only think we should take better stock of the situation before determining our course.”
“Mrs. Beazley,” says the consul, “it is the captain’s ordained task to determine the course of the boat.”
“The safe course.”
“Very well, we’ll take better stock,” Edward cuts in.
An awkward silence fills the room. Edward avoids Elsa’s gaze.
But on the third day, they do sail. The navigation of the First Narrows proves tricky. The water churns above the rusted wreckage—smashed hulls and broken masts thick with barnacles. Alert, hands ready to loosen or cleat a line, they station themselves on deck. “Remember, keep the sails loose,” says Edward. “We don’t want to catch any sudden gusts.” Slowly, the boat noses through the narrow waterway and at the first hint of dusk they drop anchor; at least Edward acknowledges the risks of sailing without full light.
At sixA .M. they awake to pass the Second Narrows at slack tide, and make it safely, though exhausted, to Punta Arenas. Here the land is flat and windswept; it is sheep country, grassy and low. “A tow!” Edward tosses the word overboard. He rubs his knee, looks up at Elsa. “You see, Elsa, I would not lead us astray.”
“I see, Edward. I see that now.”
“I am looking out for us. For all of us.”
“I know.” And she is sorry. Sorry she let her doubt reveal itself to him. He has acted with caution and kindness the entire way, and she hopes that when they are there and settled, she can prove her growing trust.
For a fortnight they sail the Patagonian Channels, a labyrinth of fjords and coves and bays. Hundreds of giant petrels and albatross circle the stern, their wings forming a loosely knit canopy of white. Alice settles herself on the foredeck, wrapped in a blanket, her arms folded across her bosom, her head tilted back. For hours she watches the birds intently, warned by Eamonn not to wave or shout at the petrels, known as “stinkers,” for vomiting when frightened.
Elsa draws a map and plots the schooner’s progress against Darwin’s route. She is now readingThe Voyage of the Beagle, devouring the descriptions of Rio de Janeiro, Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires, the Falkland Islands, and Patagonia—all places they have passed. The pages have curled from the spray of seawater.
At Isla Desolación, they are detained by hail for five days, but as they zigzag north through the channels, the weather warms. Above them now, in misty splendor, rise the snowcapped Andes.
Christmas Day, they anchor in Golfo de Penas, off the coast of Chile. A light drizzle washes the boat as they dine on a special meal of salted beef and boiled potatoes. But the damp air holds warmth, and Elsa, for the first time in weeks, perspires beneath her dress. After their meal, despite the rain, Elsa, Alice, and Edward row the dinghy ashore. Alice insists on bringing Pudding. Once the dinghy is pulled onto the beach, they hike through a winding path of dripping vegetation.
“Elsa!” Edward calls from ahead. Pulling aside a cluster of wet vines, he peers into the dark mouth of a cave. “Shall we have a look?”
“Oh, let’s!” says Elsa, breaking into a run. The exertion delights her. How wonderful to be moving! Alice, slowed by Pudding’s cage, lags behind.
From his pack Edward pulls a revolver and a small lantern, which he lights beneath the shelter of his body. “Ready?”
But as he steps forward, Alice darts ahead. “Hullo in there! Hullo!” she shouts into the cave.
“Allie dear, careful.” Elsa gently pulls her backward. “You can’t just storm in there. There might be bats.”
“Bats!”
“Bats can’t harm you, Alice,” Edward says. “And it’s likely there aren’t any. I’ll go first, just to be sure. You hold Elsa’s hand.”
“I am not going where there are bats.”
“Allie.”
Alice shakes her head no.
“Then you can wait here and look after Pudding,” says Elsa. “Edward and I won’t be a minute.”
“Why do you want to go in there if there are bats? Oh, no. Don’t go in there, Elsa.”
“We want to explore, Allie. We’re going to be one minute. That’s all. I promise you we’ll be fine.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Alice’s eyes look from Elsa to Edward and back again, and finally she moves aside and squats by the cave’s entrance, settling Pudding’s cage in a patch of grass. The bird flutters and caws, agitated by the raindrops. Elsa unties her own cape and drapes it, like a hood, over Alice’s head.
“Why don’t you tell Pudding about the albatross you’ve seen.”
“I already did.”
“What about the flying fish?”
“Oh, no. He wouldn’t like that. Fish aren’t supposed to fly. If I tell him that he will think he can swim. I’m going to tell him about bats, Elsa. Big horrible bats in caves.”
“Allie, we’re going to be fine. I’ll call to you from inside.”
Edward passes Elsa the lantern and takes her hand. With his other hand he poises the revolver. Elsa calls, “We’ll be right back.”
Inside, the air is cool and moist. Their shoes thud against the hard ground; a slow drip pings against the rocks. The walls are slick with moss, the ceiling low, and they crouch forward through the narrow passage, Elsa’s eyes intent on where she steps. Soon Edward releases her hand and squeezes ahead.
“No bats, Allie!” she hollers back, watching Edward crouch down, uncock his revolver, and tap it against the rock face. She holds the lantern out. “How deep do you think it goes?”
“I think we’re at the end,” he says. “Hear that?” He taps the handle of the revolver once more against the rock. “There’s something hollow. Maybe another passage, but there’s no opening I can see.”
Elsa wiggles beside him. “Are you sure?” She’d been hoping for a brief adventure.
“Nothing is so final as a wall of rock.”
Elsa swings the lantern in a half arc over the passage’s end. “Not even a crack,” she says.
Edward tucks his revolver through his belt and takes the lantern. “Follow my light,” he says, brushing by her. He extends his hand back for hers.
“I can manage,” she says.
She gropes the walls for balance, carefully places her feet behind his. Outside, the light is gray, and they turn from each other, embarrassed by their brief physicality.
“Good Lord,” says Edward.
Alice’s post beside the cave has been abandoned. On the ground, the cape lies in a soggy heap.
“Allie!” Elsa shouts. “We’re out now.”
“Alice!” Edward shouts, his voice panicked.
“She’s not far,” Elsa says. “She’s no doubt waiting by the dinghy.”
Hurrying through the wet overgrowth, they retrace their steps along the coast, calling Alice’s name along the way. But when they finally spot her, she isn’t waiting by the boat. She is in it, steadily rowing away from the shore, her head tilted back so that the rain falls upon her small, upturned face. Pudding’s cage sits beside her, the bird’s wings flapping madly.
“Alice!” “Allie! Allie!” Their frantic voices stumble over each other. But Alice keeps her head back. Her mouth seems to be moving, her thin lips forming strange shapes, but Elsa cannot tell if Alice is speaking to them or simply lapping at the raindrops.