Easter Island (18 page)

“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.

“—his
vision
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 the
moai
.”

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, “she
has
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 a
tatane
—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, “does
vai 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 unions, 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: Did
Greer
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 the
residencial.
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 Señor 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-François de Galaup, Comte de La Pérouse’s
Voyage 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 USS
Mohican.
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. . . .