9
In the darkness, the ropes lashing the corer to the horse’s back looked like the threads of a giant cobweb floating in front of her. It was just before dawn and Greer was in the rear of a three-horse caravan traveling the northern coastal path. The middle horse carried her large equipment. Ramon rode in the lead. They were on their way to Rano Aroi, the island’s smallest crater.
Greer would need several days to get her initial set of cores, and was eager to start. Extracting a clean core was a rigorous process, and this was her first time doing it alone; she and Thomas had always taken samples together, standing on skis or sleds, drilling holes into frozen lakes, balancing on makeshift rafts to plunge their corer into swamps. On their honeymoon in Tuscany they drove into the Apennines to collect sandstones. This was when things between them were good, when Thomas was himself, and as they hammered at the rock face, they were playful.Husband, would you give this thing a solid whack? Good God, I am, Wife . In bed at night, after they made love, waiting for sleep to claim them, they whispered about the colors of the sediment, the texture of the rocks. It was a pleasure they had shared: extracting a physical piece of history, listening to the earth grumble as it “confessed,” they liked to say, to their hammers. Back in the lab, pointing to a sample, Thomas would wink at her:Take thatto the interrogation room.But his liveliness, his delight in these processes, had vanished years ago.
Greer shifted in her saddle, trying to adjust to her gear. She had her field clothes on: long khaki pants, a sweatshirt, and knee-high rubber boots. Her backpack, weighing heavily against her, held her waterproof notebook, a camera, a large bottle of water, a first aid kit, a pair of thick gloves, three rolls of aluminum foil, and her plastic sample bags. Across her lap lay three zirconium extension rods, which flashed with light as the sun peeked over the horizon.
Greer was enjoying this long morning ride to her field site and tried to savor the anticipation, something she knew Thomas wouldn’t have been able to do. He’d become so set on achieving answers that inquiry, for him, had grown burdensome. She still wondered, though, how exactly he’d lost sight of the scientific process, why the man who’d once held himself to such high standards had cut the biggest of corners.
She tried to focus on the landscape. As the sky slowly brightened, craggy shadows revealed themselves as rocks and signposts. The obsidian sea became blue. By the time they turned inland, two miles beyond town, the sun had laid a long sparkling track across the ocean.
“Rano Aroi,” called Ramon, pointing ahead. These were the first words they’d exchanged in an hour. Something about the darkness had made silence feel natural.
“Wonderful,” said Greer. “Magnífico.”
He stopped his horse and surveyed the crater. “Sí, magnífico.”
In the distance she could see the crater rising from the grassy slope—a knuckle of land. No trees or bushes obscured the view. Beneath the threads of morning cloud, only the crater loomed ahead: her first field site.
The path vanished into the grassy plain, strewn with volcanic rocks, and cautiously, the horses made their way.
It was just past seven-thirty when they tethered the animals to an outcrop, unfastened the corer and the platform, and hauled them to the crater’s edge. Sweat coated Greer as she lugged her backpack and the extension rods along for the final hike. The corer, the rods—all this equipment had been designed by men, for men, and required sheer brute force to transport and operate. Even Ramon huffed at the weight. He was thankful, it seemed, when she told him, half in Spanish, half in pantomime, that she was all right now, that she needed to work alone, and that he could do what he pleased. The risk of having someone unskilled try to help with sample-taking was just too great. Mistakes were made too easily, data contaminated in the smallest, well-intended gesture. Ramon moved to a patch of grass, where he lay down, tucked one arm behind his head, and held a worn paperback in front of him.
Greer took out her camera and photographed the crater, the edges of its mouth barely contained within her lens. Below, the lake was matted with long, thick reeds—thetotora, she presumed—that the islanders had used for decades to make baskets, mats, and roofs. The earliest European visitors had noted this plant. Strange, then, that it alone should still grow in abundance. What kind of a mass extinction played favorites like that? A profusion of ferns made sense. But reeds weren’t known for wanderlust. They were seed plants, and their best shot at cross-water dispersal was stowing away in the plumage or stomachs of birds—much less reliable than drifting with wind. Greer would have to determine this reed’s relationship to species on nearby landfalls; from that she could estimate its life span on the island. If she found close relatives nearby, thetotora was a recent arrival. If she found only distant cousins, it had probably been there thousands of years, evolving in solitude.
Opening her notebook, Greer marked the date, time, location, and weather, then began her descent. She tucked half of the baseboard under one arm, and used a zirconium extension rod as a walking stick. The cool water rose to her knees. The reeds, easily seven feet, towered over her, reminding her of the cornfields she had walked through as a child, a world of thick green stalks and sky. But the reeds were brittle and snapped easily beneath her. Soon she had forged a path. As the shore faded from view, Greer recalled stories of scientists getting injured while taking samples. Of people breaking arms, getting their boots stuck in marshes. Of course, Ramon was just on the other side. If anything happened, she had only to call.
When she reached the midpoint of the crater, Greer set the platform on the broken reeds. The sun beat strongly. Sweat streamed into her eyes. She crouched and splashed some water on her face, then lifted off her visor, plunged it in the cool lake, and set it back on her head. The chill felt good.
She then went back for her corer and the other rods, and by the time she set down the last of her equipment, two trips later, Greer was panting. She hadn’t carried this gear in quite a while. She bent for a moment, hands on her thighs, surveying the site—the platform, the corer, the rods—and as her breathing slowed she became aware of the silence all around her, broken only by the slight slap of water against her boots. Here I am, she thought. In the middle of a crater on the most remote island in the world. Reeds rising all around me; all I can see is sky. Not a voice, not a rustle to be heard.
This was solitude, she thought, utter and remorseless. And the image of herself standing there filled her with dread. This was what life could come to.
She had to break the silence. She had to move.
Greer stepped up on one side of the platform and eased the corer through the center hole. She slid on her padded gloves and positioned the piston.
“Come on,” she said, calmed by the sound of her own voice. “Do this. Just do this.”
And with that, Greer pressed all her weight against the long metal rod, throwing herself forward as the barrel cut deeply into the wet earth.
“Ah, look, it’s Doctor Farraday! The very busy Doctor Farraday! She will settle the question once and for all! Please, Doctor, you must join us.”
The sun had almost set, a cool breeze swept the island, and Greer was walking toward herresidencial . She was thinking of the work that lay ahead of her—another few days taking samples, weeks of cleaning and analyzing. Her project now seemed more daunting than it had back in Marblehead. It had taken her five hours to extract the core segments—after tugging on the piston for an hour, she finally lay on her back, kicking at the handles. By the time she made it back to Mahina’s, tired and somewhat disheartened, she’d devoured an early dinner before dropping off the samples in the lab. Now she was hoping for a shower, and some rest.
“Looks like it was a long day in the field!” From a picnic table outside the Hotel Espíritu, Vicente was waving. A torch was pitched beside each corner of the table. Two men—one brawny, one slender and somewhat hunched—sat across from him. Thursday, she realized. The researchers’ dinner.
“Was it just a day? It felt like a week!” Greer answered cheerily, trying to make light of her weariness. She slipped her backpack off, setting it on the ground. “Those reeds are tougher than rubber. Whoo! The sun felt like a furnace. And when you get up on the rim the wind can really batter you when it gets going!” But she stopped herself; she could feel the exhilaration of finally, after a day alone, speaking with people. Ramon had been quiet even on the ride back to Hanga Roa, and her Spanish wasn’t good enough to goad a stranger, and a shy one, into conversation. He’d mainly been interested in looking at the core. When she came over the rim, he set his book down in the grass as she unwrapped one for him. He had laughed, as though amused by the idea of pieces removed from the earth.
“Doctor Greer Farraday is our new resident palynologist,” Vicente announced. The smaller man, in a gray dress shirt, offered only a nod. A pair of spectacles, thick as paperweights, sat heavily on the bridge of his nose. The other man, blond and tan, stood immediately. He was big. A yellow T-shirt hugged his chest. It read:
Swede e π
“Sven. Sven Urstedt,” he said. His handshake was firm. “Meteorologist, amateur geologist. Pisces.” His eyes, large and blue, traveled Greer. “We insist that you join us.”
Happy to be diverted from misgivings about her work, Greer sat down. The elaborate apparatus of her room key with the poker chip cut into her thigh, and she laid it on the table. “I’ll see you that,” Sven said, setting his own key, attached to a red rabbit’s foot, beside hers. “And raise you one.” He poured her a glass of what looked like pisco sour from a small yellow bucket on the table. “To clear your thoughts. Now. Purple irises,” he said. “No particular meaning, right?”
“Meaning?”
“You are leading the witness, Sven,” said Vicente.
“All right.Do purple irises have any meaning?”
“What Sven means to ask is whether or not the purple iris, as a flower, signifies anything in particular. In the way a red rose has particular meaning. Or a black rose.”
“As a gift, you mean?”
“Precisely,” said Vicente.
“Not that I know of,” said Greer. “But that’s more a question for a florist. Ph.D. programs have been cutting back on corsage and bouquet courses.”
“Doctor Farraday, flowers are meant to be cut!” said Sven.
Greer laughed.
“No distractions, Sven,” said Vicente. “We are at an impasse.”
“Wereat an impasse.”
“Sven, Doctor Farraday has made it clear she isn’t sure.”
“If we can’t find anyone to tell us what the irises do mean, I think it’s safe to assume they simply don’t have a meaning. If they did, people would know. That is, I should think, the wholepurpose of meaning.”
Greer thought Sven had a good point.
“Well, it seems von Spee knew what they meant. ‘They will do nicely for my grave’—that is a fairly strong statement,” said Vicente.
“Von Spee was depressed. Moody. For God’s sake, Germans can’t take anything lightly.” Sven swigged his pisco and thumped the glass down on the table. “One bouquet and . . . he sinks his fleet.” He grinned, proud of this last statement.
Vicente turned to Greer. He was wearing a dark blue shirt that lent a richness to his olive skin. “We’re speaking of Admiral von Spee. I have come across some documents that—”
“We’redone speaking of Admiral von Spee. We are going to bore her to tears.”
“All right,” said Vicente.
The man in the gray shirt had still not looked at her.
“What about plain irises?” Vicente asked. “Do they have a meaning? Like the lily?”
“Vicente!” said Sven. “I like you much better when you are obsessing over therongorongo. It is worth searching for meaning in that. In flowers—well, I simply cannot support you on that mission.”
Lily, thought Greer. Lillian Bethany Greer—that was her given name. But growing up she disliked Lillian—it was too matronly—and Lily in particular, especially as she became interested in botany; some jokes couldn’t be stomached for a lifetime. And in science, androgynous names helped. Applying to graduate school she became Greer Sandor: her father’s name, reversed. And when she married, Greer Sandor Farraday. But Thomas, in private, had always called her Lily.
“Very well,” sighed Vicente. “Another topic. SAAS is making noise about a conference.”
“They’ve been making noise about a conference for two years,” said Sven.
“But now they have threatened to send one of their people.”
“People? They havepeople ? No, SAAS is run by machines. Never have I seen an organization for archaeology so uninterested in, well, archaeology. They care about the light fixtures, the memos, the packets of guidelines. Last month we received a shipment, a whole crate, of ballpoint pens. For over a year now I’ve been trying to get access to Chilean weather satellite data. That is, after all, my work. South Pacific weather patterns. Ocean currents and their relation to Polynesian migrations. But what do I get? Seventy-five—the exact number apportioned to my lab—blue ballpoint pens.”
“Well, Sven, perhaps if they send one of their people the situation will improve,” Vicente said. “You could voice your concerns.”
“Oh, I’ve voiced my concerns. Anyway, no more work talk. Greer,” Sven began, his hand swatting the former conversation from the air. “You look very musical. Surely you play an instrument. I’d guess the oboe.”
“I’ve no musical talents whatsoever.”
“Sven is an aspiring opera singer,” Vicente said. “And it has always been his dream—”
“Vision.”Sven smiled broadly at Greer.
“—hisvision that we might have some sort of talent show. Drama, music, games. Unfortunately, he is the only one among us with any talents.”
“Yes, Vicente here holds the record for the longest hot air balloon voyage over the Andes, but of what entertainment value is that?His talents require elaborate equipment and funds.”
“I’m afraid this is true,” Vicente said with a shrug.
“Games?” This word came from the third man at the table.
“Yes, games, Burke-Jones. We need some games. Some entertainment. Don’t you think?”
The man, his gaze still fastened on the tabletop, nodded. His hair was strawberry blond and looked as though it had once been thick with curls. It now lay matted across his scalp, a few lone ringlets clinging to his forehead, as though penciled in. Beneath the thick glasses, his eyes were puffy with fatigue.
“Croquet,” said Vicente. “Or badminton. The British games, of course.”
“I’ll bet Burke-Jones can send a shuttlecock flying.”
Burke-Jones smiled at this.
“Excellent,” said Sven. “Now, Doctor Farraday, although my abilities are enough to make up for everyone else’s lack, it would be so lovely to have a partner in crime—”
“Crime,” mumbled Vicente. “Pray you never hear him sing.”
“—a fellow aesthete, a performer, a lover of the arts.”
Greer wondered if all their get-togethers were this energetic, this choreographed, or if she had, like the observer in a quantum experiment, influenced the result. Or perhaps this was what the island’s lack of entertainment had led them to—a sort of conversational dance, banter acrobatics.
“Well, I can name almost every family, genus, and species in the Urticales and Magnoliales orders. Backward alphabetically,” she said. “Or forward, if you prefer. Though that gets dull pretty soon. You could put it to music, I suppose. But its main value is in curing insomnia. Like counting sheep, but for the very compulsive and detail-oriented.”
“Taxonomy!” Sven’s eyes flickered. “Definitely something to work with.”
Greer noticed that Burke-Jones, behind his thick bifocals, was studying her.
“Impressive stare,” she said. “A good old-fashioned inquisition stare. But I’m afraid I’ve nothing to confess.”
“This is Randolph Burke-Jones,” Vicente said. “He is our engineer. Our architect. He is going to tell us how the Rapa Nui moved themoai .”
Burke-Jones again lowered his eyes to the table. Before him stood the ruins of three tropical drinks—smashed pineapple chunks and wilted orange rings buried beneath a campfire of colored toothpicks. Where, Greer wondered, when they sat pouring drinks from a bucket, did he get all those colored toothpicks?
“You’re British?” asked Greer.
He looked up briefly. The torchlight played across his face. “Indeed.”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Sven said. “Brits try to pretend they’re all poise and propriety. Not Burke-Jones. He’s a wild card. Though he hides it well.”
Burke-Jones slowly pulled the slender straws from his empty drinks, arranged them in a tidy row, then gathered the toothpicks and began piling them. Greer felt a sudden surge of warmth toward him—a man who indulged his eccentricities.
Vicente tapped Greer’s shoulder. “So, you have taken your core?”
“Six meters of very wet, very fibrous peat. It should correlate to at least six centuries.”
“And you’ll be able to see the pollen for each time period?”
“Yes. But it’ll take quite some time. The whole core needs to be sampled, cleaned, and treated. Extracting pollen grains is painstaking. Then counting them all. Just identifying what those grains are can take weeks.” Saying it now brought back her sense of exhaustion. How had she not realized the difficulty of doing this all alone? How had she gone from years of working in a lab with a team to collecting samples by herself on an island thousands of miles from anything? “But it’s all in the service of getting an accurate picture of the island’s early biota.”
“Splendid!” said Sven. “Or, as they say in Spanish,espléndido. ”
“There!” announced Burke-Jones, and when Greer looked over, she saw on the table before him a miniature tepee of straws and toothpicks.
“Masterly, my friend!” said Sven, clapping him on the back. “Ah, look, here comes Don Juan.” Sven closed his eyes, tipped his chin to the moon, and began to hum “Che gelida manina.”
An old man was walking by. He was narrow-shouldered, and the cuffs of his sweater had been rolled thickly to his wrists. He bent forward slightly, which gave him a look of pensiveness. Almost certainly this was the man she’d seen leaving the plate by the cave.
“Who is that?” asked Greer.
“Luka Tepano,” answered Vicente.
“That,” said Sven, “is Don Juan.”
“Luka is the devoted caretaker of the island’s hermit.”
“Okay,” said Sven. “Lancelot.”
“The old woman in the cave?” asked Greer.
“Guinevere,” said Sven. “Further along in life.”
“You’ve been exploring!” said Vicente. “Yes. Ana has lived in that cave as far back as anyone can remember. The islanders say she is one of the forgotten Neru virgins—the girls who were confined in caves to become pale for religious festivals. Specially appointed women pushed food into the cave. When the enslaved islanders were returned by the Peruvians, they brought smallpox. Eighty percent of the population died within weeks. The Neru virgins did not know what had happened. The women who brought the food died, and the girls died of starvation.”
“But this was in . . . ?”
“Eighteen seventy-seven.”
“She can’t be that old,” said Greer.
“Don’t forget,” said Sven, smiling, “shehas been keeping out of the sun.”
“She’s British,” said Burke-Jones.
“Yes,” said Vicente. “Some Rapa Nui believe she is British. Some say German even, left here by the fleet. Some believe she is atatane —the spirits that live in the caves. Of course, since ancient times the caves were homes for the islanders. There is also a long tradition of eccentrics and prophets living apart from the village.”
“What,” said Greer, pulling her notebook from her bag and searching for the page where she’d written about the old woman, “doesvai kava nehe nehe mean? That’s Rapa Nui?”
“Yes,” said Vicente, “it means ‘beautiful ocean.’ ”
“Oh.” This didn’t reveal much. “And the man? He brings her food?”
“Luka takes care of her. Some say he is her son. That he was born out of wedlock and she was sent in shame by her family to live away from the village. We have many incidents here of shameful union s, children separated from their parents. So many people are related, it makes courtship difficult.”
“Luka’s in love with her,” said Sven.
“Sven, you see, has a fondness for older women. And therefore believes all men do.”
“How many are still used?” asked Greer. “Caves, I mean.”
“Difficult to say,” said Vicente. “Many are extremely well hidden. Many, I think, have never been explored. But Ana’s is the only inhabited one we know of right now. The caves, you realize, can be quite dangerous. There are scorpions and black widow spiders. You must be very careful. If you go inside, leave a piece of clothing by the entrance so that people can find you.”
“If the islanders lived in them there are probably traces of their food, their garbage. There might be fossils in them.”
“Bones,” said Sven. “Piles of bones. Human bones. Men, women, children.”
“Doctor Farraday needs plant fossils, Sven. Her main focus is pollen.”
“That’s my specialty.”
Sven took a sip of his drink. “And for your husband too?”
“Yes,” said Greer.
Something in the pause that followed told her they had spoken of this, her husband, earlier.
“I’d like to again give my apologies for not knowing the situation,” said Vicente. “It is hard for us here to keep track of what is happening in the real world. My regrets.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Yes,” said Sven, “a devastating piece of news.”
“For him, especially,” said Greer, and as soon as she’d said this she realized they hadn’t been talking about Thomas’s disgrace. They’d simply been offering condolences about his death. Perhaps none of them recalled the details of the scandal. People outside palynology rarely did. They remembered only that the eminent Thomas Farraday had been dismissed from Harvard for something involving data, and their only real curiosity, the question asked of her too many times, was, simply: DidGreer know?
“I should get back,” Greer said, rising. Vicente and Sven stood; Burke-Jones removed his glasses, wiped them clean with a handkerchief, put them on again, and examined his tepee.
“So soon?” Vicente asked.
“I need a shower and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow is another day in the field. And the next day. And the day after that.”
“Please let us know how your research goes,” said Vicente. “As I said, we must help each other whenever we can. All of our work is interconnected. We mustn’t forget that. We will see you around.” He touched her elbow and whispered, “So, the iris? It really means nothing?”
“It could mean a great deal,” she said. “To the right person.”
“Ah, I will consider that. Well, good night, Doctor Farraday.”
“Good night,” she said, lifting her backpack.
It was a short walk to theresidencial. The streets were quiet, the small blue and white cement buildings, separated by trenches of shadow, tucked in for the night. The only sound was the soft flap of Greer’s sandals against the street. Then, from one of the houses, came a young couple, islanders, their arms linked. The girl stroked a white shell necklace as she spoke, and the boy listened intently. They looked blissful, Greer thought. Trusting. They smiled as Greer passed.
Back at Ao Popohanga, Mahina was at her desk in the main office, making notes in a ledger book.
“Buenas noches, Doctora!How was your work? Ramon said you were happy with your piece.”
It was hard to imagine Ramon saying much to anyone. “Yes,” said Greer. “I took a good core, I think.”
“You work all day at Rano Aroi, he says. Very near you was Terevaka. The most high point on the island. Someday, you take the time to go there. I will bring you to see. But now you have more work,Doctora. You have been given many, many books!” From behind the desk, Mahina pulled a stack of worn texts.
“For me?”
“Yes, yes. From Se?or Portales.”
“Thank you.” Greer felt her spirits lighten. Work—good. Perhaps she wasn’t yet ready for sleep. A little reading before she drifted off would remind her it wasn’t all physical labor ahead. “Many thanks, Mahina.”
“I have books too, you see.” Mahina pointed above her to a glass-doored bookcase with a shelf of old leather volumes. The lettering on their spines had faded. “If you need, for the research, you ask. They come from my father.”
“Thank you. Well, good night, then.”
Back in her room, Greer took a long, hot shower and settled herself in bed, buttressed by a semicircle of texts: Roggeveen’s journal, translated into English; a hand-bound copy of Captain Cook’s log; Jean-Fran?ois de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse’sVoyage Round the World ; the document in which Don Felipe González y Haedo declared the island a territory of Spain; Pierre Loti’s travel records; the diary of Paymaster Thomson of the USSMohican. A sheet of paper had been inserted in Roggeveen’s book:
You will, I think, find some helpful passages buried in these. You may now converse with all the early visitors, except the British who went missing with their journals and can be of no help. Do you speak French and Spanish? I should have asked. I can translate Loti and La Pérouse and González if it would be of help.
Vicente
Well, she thought as she propped the lumpy pillows against the headboard, Vicente certainly was kind. But there was something odd in him not mentioning the books earlier in front of the others, as though it were a private matter.
A cool draft billowed the curtain, and Greer pulled the quilt tightly to her chest. She thumbed through Jacob Roggeveen’s expedition log, which detailed everything from his first sighting of the island to his departure. He had come upon Rapa Nui in 1722 on a mission for the Dutch East India Company. It was Easter Day, and from his ship Roggeveen at first thought the island composed entirely of sand:
. . . we mistook the parched-up grass, and hay or other scorched and charred brushwood for a soil of that arid nature, because from its outward appearance it suggested no other idea than that of an extraordinarily sparse and meager vegetation.
Nothing more, however, in Roggeveen’s log mentioned the landscape. But this was useful: parched-up grass, sparse and meager vegetation. An island so barren it was thought covered by sand. It meant that in 1722 the island hosted little more flora than it did at present. Any mass extinction must have happened before he arrived.
Greer read on, and another section drew her attention:
During the forenoon Captain Bouman brought an Easter Islander on board, together with his craft, in which he had come off close to the ship from the land; he was quite nude, without the slightest covering for that which modesty shrinks from revealing. This hapless creature seemed to be very glad to behold us, and showed the greatest wonder at the build of our ship. He took special notice of the tautness of our spars, the stoutness of our rigging and running gear, the sails, the guns—which he felt all over with minute attention—and with everything else that he saw. . . .
A great many canoes came off to the ships; these people showed us at that time their great cupidity for every thing they saw; and were so daring that they took the seamen’s hats and caps from off their heads, and sprang overboard with the spoil; for they are surpassingly good swimmers as would seem from the great numbers of them who came swimming off from the shore to the ships. . . .
As to their seagoing craft, they are of poor and flimsy construction; for their canoes are fitted together of a number of small boards and light frames, which they skillfully lace together with very fine laid twine. . . . But as they lack the knowledge, and especially the material, for caulking the great number of seams for their canoes, and making them tight, they consequently leak a great deal.
In the morning we proceeded with three boats and two shallops, manned by 134 persons, all armed with musket, pistols, and cutlass . . . we proceeded in open order, but keeping well together, and clambered over the rocks, which are very numerous on the sea margin, as far as the level land or flat, making signs with the hand that the natives, who pressed round us in great numbers, should stand out of our way and make room for us . . . we marched forward a little, to make room for some of our people who were behind, that they might fall in with the ranks, who were accordingly halted to allow the hindmost to come up, when, quite unexpectedly and to our great astonishment, four or five shots were heard in our rear, together with a vigorous shout of “’t is tyd, ’t is tyd, geeft vuur” [It’s time, it’s time, fire!].On this, as in a moment, more than thirty shots were fired, and the Indians, being thereby amazed and scared, took to flight, leaving 10 or 12 dead, besides the wounded. . . .
Roggeveen, it seemed, had no further explanation for the violence.
Greer closed the book and set it down. How often in the history of the world, she wondered, had the same story unfolded? An armed exploring party goes ashore and opens fire. Themoai, therongorongo, the floral extinction: None of it really mattered. Easter Island was like every other landmass in the world—when after centuries of isolation it met the rest of the world, the world struck it down. But what could be done? Wasn’t all prehistory and history—speciation, human migration, exploration—just an elaborate game of musical chairs? A border was crossed, a colony taken, an island explored. A snake stowing away on flotsam made it to a new shore, a breadfruit tree in the arms of a naturalist crossed the ocean, a prehistoric mammoth traversed a continental land bridge. The music played, positions changed, and in the end, a chair was taken away. A resource was removed and somebody was left standing. Extinction, genocide, survival of the fittest. Someone always had to leave the game.
Greer felt a familiar gloominess coming over her. She usually shook it away with a walk on the beach or a trip to the movies, but now she had to try to sleep it off. She shoved the books to the foot of the bed, turned off the light, and closed her eyes. The sounds of the night—moth wings batting her window, laughter from somewhere down the street—intensified. Turning onto her stomach, Greer held one of the pillows over her head to muffle the sounds, but still her mind prowled.
She directed her thoughts to Roggeveen and retraced his narrative. With what had the islanders constructed their canoes? What had been the effect of the exchange of goods on the isolated population? Would a population capable of building and transporting giant statues “lack” the knowledge of caulking a canoe? What was the psychological effect of the violence of Roggeveen’s men?
A rustling of leaves from the courtyard distracted her, and once more Greer turned over, adjusted the quilt, and settled on her side with the pillow held against her ear. For the past few months, it was either insomnia or utter exhaustion. And after a day in the crater and drinks with the researchers, she should have been exhausted.
She began whispering the families in Urticales.
Urticaceae, nettle.Urtica dioica, stinging nettle.Boehmeria nivea, China grass.
Ulmaceae, elm.Ulmus americana. Ulmus parvifolia. Ulmus rubra. Ulmus alata. Ulmus procera.
Moraceae, mulberry . . .
Mulberry. Greer stopped. Mulberry included the famous strangler fig of the Amazonian rain forest. As a small sprout, it would climb the trunk of a nearby tree, leeching water and minerals from the bark, struggling to reach sunlight. Once the roots of the fig took hold, they thickened and hardened, grew branches and leaves, enmeshing the host tree, strangling it to death. In the end, the fig looked monstrous—bulbous, contorted—its roots fused like tumors onto its lifeless host. If you cut through the trunk, which Thomas had done in the front of his classroom the first time she’d ever seen one, you could see the victim within.
“And there it is. Nature isn’t always beautiful,” Thomas had announced as he pointed to a cross section of tangled roots. His eyes scanned the class. “One must never romanticize the natural world. What’s important is to see it clearly, to see what’s there, not what you would like to see. Plants have no inherent beauty, no inherent innocence. TheArtemisia absinthium releases poison from its leaves—one rainfall and all other neighboring plants are dead. This is neither an act of goodness nor of evil. It’s simply a mechanism developed by a particular organism to ensure its survival. The world’s largest flower is produced byRafflesia arnoldii, a parasitic plant of the Malay Archipelago. It lives inside climbing vines, then breaks through the bark of the host, expanding into a twenty-pound, three-foot flower that smells, quite unbeautifully, like rotting flesh. This is and will always be the difference between botanists and the rest of the populace, and you must remember it—we will look at a plant and we will see a complex narrative of need and fulfillment, of adaptation and mutation. Everybody else—your parents, your friends, your roommates—will see just something colorful. Something for the garden or a window box. They will see something that their dear benevolent Judeo-Christian God placed before them for their delight.”
Thomas had perfected the pragmatic-scientist role, and liked to make a strong impression on first-year botany students. But Greer, when she watched him that day, didn’t yet understand the drama of it, of him. He simply seemed an impossible cynic, a man who had looked in microscopes so long he could no longer see the beauty of the natural world. Never, she told herself, would she become like him: a hardened scientist. But something in his cynicism had challenged her, made her want to show him the world was, in fact, beautiful. And the day after the lecture, in a gesture that began their courtship, she slipped beneath his office door a passage from Whitman’sSong of Myself, a poem she had always loved.
As she lay in bed, what Thomas said about the strangler fig now struck Greer as eerie. She’d heard him say it a dozen times, he said it to every intro class he’d taught while they were married. It was his favorite speech. But she’d never imagined his beliefs went beyond the natural world, that they could seep into his life, their marriage.
Greer felt a strange sickness rise in her stomach. She threw the covers back and stepped out of bed. On the desk sat the small seed stranded in its liquid universe. Eight years. She shouldn’t have brought it here.
She slipped on her sandals, pulled a skirt over her nightdress, then grabbed a flashlight and left her room. The porch was silent, but as she moved quietly across the courtyard, she noticed, among the foliage, a flash of white: There, before the Virgin Mary statue, Mahina was kneeling in prayer. Her eyes were closed, her hands clasping what seemed to be a photograph.
This was where Mahina found peace. Prayer was how people made sense of the past. But Greer belonged to no church, no faith, and on nights like this, when she couldn’t sleep, she was simply left with a sense of aloneness.
Greer tugged open the door to the main building, and walked into the night toward the lab.