Enchanted Islands (22 page)

I did have to admire the house though, and their luck in finding such a dwelling place already built. There were wood plank floors, with lumber obviously purchased off-island, and their veranda was large and completely covered by a tarp. They also had tarp walls, and on the windward side a wall made of corrugated metal of which I was very jealous. The long, straight poles that held up their house made it airy and spacious, with copious shelves for the many books and papers that Ritter and Dore had collected in their ten years on the islands. Now, though, they were mostly empty.

Still, their house made me feel uneasy; the deceased's belongings haunted the place. I didn't think it was the Muellers who created the brush marks in front of our house, but they were obviously a bit off their nuts. I find unpredictability in humans very off-putting, and so I breathed a sigh of relief as I finally extricated myself from their clutches.

I did find my way back because I spent the entire journey thinking about the Muellers, and whether they could possibly be German government employees. Therefore my feet had free rein to find their own way without interference from my intellect, and they did splendidly.

It was easy for me to imagine the Muellers getting sent away just so the continent of Europe would have some breathing room, but as far as strategies go, sending a myopic drip to look for ships or a place to moor a fleet could not have been the wisest course of action. The famed German efficiency wouldn't have tolerated such sluggishness. These were not government agents.

I was near home when my body went into high alert. What was wrong? I heard voices laughing. Voices. Plural. A strange sound for the islands. Ainslie was sitting at our table drinking lemonade with Genevieve and Victor.

“Hello, what's this?” I said.

Ainslie said, “I ran into them on the way home and they came by for a drink, such as it is.”

“Oh,” I said. I was tired, and not excited about having guests, especially these. I'd had enough trying Germans for a day, nay, a week. “Can you help me with this?” I held out the sugarcane.

“Of course.” Ainslie stood to take the package from me. He set it next to the stove. “Have a seat. We were talking about…I'm not sure.”

Genevieve came toward me and kissed my cheek. I must have smelled terrible. “You the eyes of the nice person, yes?” she said in Spanish.

I have always been a sucker for a compliment, and Genevieve delivered this one with such sincerity that I was forced to examine her for once in return. She must indeed have been striking when she was younger and less disheveled. She still held herself regally. She could see me soften. She gestured around our house. “I come to say hello to friend.”

“How nice,” I said in Spanish.

She sat ceremoniously on our bench, legs crossed at the knees. Her shorts were frayed at the ends, and she picked at a thread. I noticed her extreme thinness. Her collarbones were protruding and her rib cage was poking through the gap in her blouse. My pity won out over my wariness, and I invited them to stay for dinner.

It was a bit in retaliation for Ainslie leaving me at the Muellers', though it would mean more work for me, preparing dinner, than for him. I stoked the fire and cooked a double portion of the cow we'd butchered recently.

We sat down to eat, smiling, nodding, and pantomiming, but mostly eating. Our guests seemed untroubled that they had contributed nothing to the meal and were consuming the lion's share of it.

Genevieve was flirty with Ainslie, smiling with her oversize teeth showing. The grin crinkled the skin around her eyes, which made me suspect her more. I didn't like the way both Ainslie and Victor paid so much attention to her. I didn't like the way she demanded it, laughing too loudly, using her hands to gesture so that everyone became protective of their glass lest she knock it over.

Whenever I tried to contribute to the conversation, either by translating or adding my own thoughts, Genevieve laughed, too high, humoring me. She began to sing, and her voice was solid, if not beautiful. She sang something melancholy and when she stopped, both men applauded her roundly. She gestured with her hand to say, Your turn, but my voice is so bad that when I was teaching they asked me not to sing at my school's seasonal concert. I shook my head. I found myself exhausted by the effort to entertain as well as the activity of the day. Once you're out of the habit, interacting with others is a trial. All right, I'll say it: I was jealous. She was younger and charismatic in a way that I never was. A way that Rosalie was able to master effortlessly. An old insecurity rearing its ugly head again. It always made me feel my plainness and my age acutely. I stood up and began to scrub the dishes with sand and salt water. Genevieve did not help me, which annoyed me further. Where I came from, the women helped to serve and clear the meal.

The three of them shared a cigarette while I banged our tin plates together to signal my displeasure. But either no one heard me or no one cared. Finally Genevieve said she was ready to go home. We said our goodbyes. Genevieve tried to hug me, and I let her put her arms around me. Oddly, she smelled like flowers. I was so used to Ainslie's and my stink, it was a shock to smell something on a person other than body odor.

Ainslie walked them to the Camino de la Muerte so they could find their way back, and also to make sure that they were safely out of earshot when he returned.

“That's who has been lurking around, I'd bet my life on it,” Ainslie said.

“Hopefully you don't have to,” I said.

“Run into them my foot.” Ainslie paced our small home. “I caught them poking around.”

“In the house?” I looked around, to see if anything was out of place, not that there was anything I particularly cared about in it. My diary was harmless enough, and there were no letters to “Ainslie's sister,” even in code.

Ainslie said, “Let's just keep our eyes open.”

“And look for what?” I asked.

“You'll know it when you see it.”

“Elmer Ainslie Conway, I have never in my life known it when I saw it.”

For two weeks I saw no human being other than Ainslie. No ships came in, no neighbors visited. I liked it like this. Ainslie reported seeing Genevieve and Victor on his daily outings to improve his roads or to hunt or to visit the radio, but I was always at home. We played our cover so convincingly that there were occasions when I forgot it wasn't true. We were homesteaders, Swiss Family Robinsons, newlyweds. Ainslie was affectionate, even when it was clear that we weren't being watched. Though living on the island was difficult, physically, I felt freer there than I had ever in my life. I wanted to keep the real world on the other side of the ocean. I wanted to keep away a looming war, an inevitable return to civilization.

Ainslie's mood began to improve. I wasn't sure what the change was, but I could hear him whistling as he came down the path for dinner. Even in the morning he was less like a beast of the jungle and more his best self. I thought it was perhaps that he was finally getting to be the spy we came here for. When a man lacks a vocation (even if he's busy), he is less of a man. Ainslie's purpose gave him strength.

Three weeks to the day, which made me think they planned it on purpose, our neighbors came to visit again. They sat down to my famous “sandcakes” (a sort of flatbread/pancake) and strong coffee. At least this time they brought oranges, though our grove overproduced them anyway.

Genevieve was dressed in the same outfit as the last time I'd seen her (then again, so was I). There was a new hole in her shirt, under her arm. Victor's hair had grown longer and his beard had come in full, red on his chin, patchy toward his ears. He looked a bit like a wild dog.

Ainslie treated Genevieve as royalty. He greeted her by kissing her hand. He pulled out our bench so that she could sit down, and poured her more coffee each time she took a sip. He was convincingly enthralled—could he actually be fooled by her fake solicitousness? He leaned forward across the table and rested his chin on his hands, really listening. He laughed when she did, so loudly that I could see the gold of his fillings. I got angrier and angrier, gripping my fists tightly. I even thought of flirting with Victor, but I was so out of practice, I wouldn't even know what to do.

Once they left, I planned to tell Ainslie exactly what I thought of his attitude toward Genevieve. To see him desiring another woman made me furious. Why? I wondered as I scrubbed the plates. What did I care if he found someone attractive? Why wouldn't he? And though I thought Genevieve ugly, she
was
a decade or so younger than I.

“What is wrong with you?” I hissed.

“What do you mean?”

“You were practically fondling her.”

“It's our job.” Ainslie laughed, which made me angrier. “I only have eyes for you, Mrs. Conway,” he said.

“I don't believe that,” I said. “You don't have eyes for me.”

The tenor of the conversation changed. “Franny, I don't really have eyes for anyone.” He sat on the bench and rested his elbows on his knees, which made him look smaller.

There had been so many of these men in my life, men who wanted a sister rather than a lover, men who would rather live alone in their own thoughts. Was I one of them? One of those people who ultimately wanted to be alone? Maybe that was why I never married. What did that say about me?

“I'm not sure I even understand what that means,” I said. I remained on the other side of our house. I didn't want to be near him so he could kiss me on the head or pat my knee.

“This has worked out better than I'd hoped,” he said, waving his hand back and forth, indicating us. “Sure as hell beats Verdun as assignments go, but you have to remember why we entered into this.”

I was stung, as though slapped. I'd begun to believe the lie of our marriage. But I looked at Ainslie now, and I was sure, as I stared at his brows, unknit and wrinkleless, that he had been pretending. Was any of his affection for me real? Or was it all another job, like clearing the spring of brush or radioing Guayaquil? My heart began to beat rapidly. Ainslie was so good at deceiving, I felt a chill.

He must have seen my dejection. He leaped to his feet and put his arms around me. “Oh Franny, I didn't mean it like that. I'm thrilled to be saddled with you, but we need to remember to put Pomegranate first.”

“What will happen to us,” I whispered, “when it's over?” It was so good to be held that I relaxed into his embrace.

“Oh I don't know,” Ainslie said breezily. “A mission's over when it's over, and until then, can't we enjoy how well it's working out?”

I willed a tear not to fall.

“I mean,” he continued, “it could have been awful, and it's rather nice.”

“Do you think so?” I asked.

He pushed me back so that he could see my face. “Of course.” He looked stricken. “Don't you?”

“Yes,” I said. “It is rather nice, I suppose.”

His face relaxed. “I'm sorry, I'm not used to working with women. I probably say all the wrong things. I'm very fond of you, you have to know that.”

“I'm just…I have island fever, I think.”

“Happens to the best of them,” he said. “You're doing a great job. We'll keep an eye on them. I'll stick close to home.”

It is an interesting quality in humans (or in my incarnation of humanity) that this promise gave me hope, or kept hope alive. He kissed the top of my head and hugged me, and I could hear his heart beating. I willed mine to beat in time and we stood that way a long while, letting our blood run through us together, interrupted intimacy.

A week or so later, I went down to the ocean to see if I could catch some fish. Usually hunting was Ainslie's job, but he refused to have anything to do with seafood, and I was growing tired of our all-meat diet. I thought perhaps I could find some lobsters, or mussels, or catch a fish with some bait and a line. How naïve I was. Lobsters hide, fish swim far from shore. While I waited for something to bite, sitting on some sharp rocks, the sun beat down on me. I realized I hadn't seen the ocean in a month. I sipped at my water canteen. I felt and wore all the years of my age, the twinges in my knees, the various age spots on my arms, the slight curve of my pre-arthritic fingers. I was struck by the folly of our mission, by my involvement in it, and I retraced the path of my life, wondering how it was that I started the daughter of immigrants in Minnesota and ended up a spy in the Galápagos Islands. At that moment, a curious bug came toward me, its body half stick and half leaf, and I began to think about all the paths Darwin described which brought animals here, and for the first time all day, I was comforted.

I relate these musings not because I imagine that a reader will find them interesting but to explain how an entire day can go by when your only conversation partner is yourself. And how you start to believe in that bifurcated voice as much as you believe in your own, because it
is
your own.

Eventually I gave up the line and waded into the water to get cool, and that's when I saw that the tide had gone out, trapping a couple of fish in the tide pool. I suppose they were young tuna. I don't know very much about fish, but even I could catch these. I grabbed one by the tail and swung it against the rock to put it out of its misery, and repeated the process with a second one.

At home, I started the fire. I had gotten good at this now. I knew what kind and shape of wood made the best kindling, and which was the best for smoking meat. I could tell by looking at its whirled knots, its tender edges, whether it was dry enough to burn or if it would just smoke and peter out like a storm gathering strength out on the water but then deciding not to bother with rain. I could see how heavy it would be, whether or not I could carry it or if it was worth chopping up with the small hand ax.