Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (234 page)

"I'm
not
enamored
of
your
Captain!"

"And
I,"
she
said
thoughtfully,
"was
once
enamored
of
him
for forty
years."

"And
now?"
Patterson
wanted
to
know.

"Now?"
She
scooped
up
some
sand
and
let
it
sift
through
her fingers.
"Oh,
my
poor
young
man,
does
anyone
remain
in
love
for all
eternity?
Do
you
really
believe
that
pretty
legend?"

"Then
you
hate
him?"

"Hate?
No.
You
can
neither
hate
nor
love
for
a
hundred
years. I
have
suffered
both,
so
I
know,
and
tried
to
kill
myself
three
times. Oh,
yes,
there
is
not
much
that
I
cannot
tell
you
about
love.
One does
not
live
as
long
as
I
have
lived
without
learning
wisdom."

"And
please
tell
me,
Doña
Inés,"
begged
Patterson,
"what
you
have learned
about
life
in
a
hundred
and
forty
years."

"A
hundred
and
sixty,"
she
corrected.
"I
was
twenty
when
cast
up here.
What
have
I
learned?
One
thing
above
all—to
live
without emotion.
Love,
hate,
tedium—those
are
all
words,
very
unimportant words.
They
are
nothing.
I
like
to
eat
when
I
am
hungry,
sleep
when I
am
tired,
swim
when
the
sun
is
hot.
All
that
is
good,
because
it
is just
enough.
I
used
to
think—I
never
think
now.
I
was
mad,
you
know, for
a
little
time,
five
years
or
so,
because
I
thought
too
much.
But
soon I
was
cured.
That
was
when,
having
loved
Micah
and
hated
him,
at last
he
sickened
me.
I
imagined
I
could
not
bear
that.
But
you
see I
was
wrong."

She
laughed,
shaking
back
a
tress
of
hair,
and
he
knew
that,
with death,
she
had
also
lost
her
soul
and
her
humanity.
She
was,
as
she had
said,
empty,
drained
of
all
emotion;
she
was
as
sterile
mentally, this
lovely
lady,
as
the
parakeets
chattering
above
her
head.
But
she was
very
beautiful.

"And
the
Captain?"
he
inquired.
"Is
it
rude
to
ask
what
are
his feelings
towards
you?"

"Indeed,
no!"
And
she
laughed
again.
"The
Captain
is
still
a
man, although
he
should
have
been
dead
long
ago.
Being
a
man,
he
has need
of
a
woman
sometimes.
Being
a
man,
he
is
determined
that other
men
shall
not
take
that
woman.
That
is
all.
Apart
from
that, like
us
all,
he
is
petrified."

And
then,
although
the
ten
minutes
were
not
up,
she
heard
Judd coming
up
the
hill
and
slipped
like
a
bright
shadow
to
her
own
hut.

Days
passed
slowly
on
the
island.
One
day
was
like
another.
Always the
sun
poured
brilliantly
upon
sapphire
seas,
gleaming
sands,
jeweled foliage.
Macaws
flashed
like
darting
rainbows
through
the
dusky
green of
jungle
arches,
the
fruit
hung
coral-bright
from
trees
whose
blossoms flung
out
trailing
creepers
gayer,
more
gaudy,
than
the
patterns
of vivid
Spanish
shawls.
And
yet
it
seemed
to
Patterson
after
two
months that
all
this
radiant
beauty
was
evil
and
poisoned,
like
a
sweet
fruit rotten
at
the
core.
What
should
have
been
paradise
was
only
a
pretty hell.
Slowly,
reluctantly,
he
had
been
forced
to
accept
the
island
for what
it
was
according
to
his
comrades.
He
now
believed,
although shamefacedly,
that
Thunder
and
Doña
Inés
had
lived
there
since
the mutiny
of
the
Black
Joke,
that
Heywood
had
been
marooned
in
the last
century
for
insubordination,
that
Judd
had
emerged
from
the wreck
of
the
Titanic.
And
yet,
obstinately,
he
still
clung
to
the
idea of
escape.
One
day
he
would
escape.
And
then,
once
away
from
the island's
shores,
he
would
regain
mortality,
he
would
wrap
mortality about
him
like
a
cloak.