Poe's Children (64 page)

Only silence for reply.

And though he went down in a rage on his knees and pounded on the rock-strewn ground for three days, eating nothing, and not even drinking water, and though the ground was cold in the strong November chill, and though he made supplication and implored, and beseeched and importuned, and alternately begged and bellowed, she would not yield.

Tropical sweetness now. Sweeter than the sugar cane. Sweeter than the syrup dripping from the stalks cut and bound for refining. Blinding sun. Blazing heat. Leaves of plants so delicate they wither in the sun.

Sirs, the female is fussy in her decision as to where to lay her eggs; she grades each leaf for suitability, rejecting one leaf after another before choosing.

Insects swarm, approaching hungry and curious, the jungle forest stretches before her, sounds, the occasional glimpses of birds. She is on her way to Rama, farther down along the Saramacca. The African slaves walk ahead of her, unsheathing knives flashing, cutting a path through the dense growth of the forest, hacking down the weeds and the saw grass so she can pass through. She has with her bottles half-filled with brandy to preserve dead some of what she finds, but also the mesh cages lined with bolting cloth to take other specimens alive, and to retain for them the natural conditions of their environment, to study their transformations without interrupting them, to observe for herself all the stages of their development. Her head is covered with a wide-brimmed hat. A few beads of perspiration run down from beneath the hat. She wears a shirt under the makeshift overall that she has sewn for her work in the jungle. The Surimombo slaves call her medicine woman. The women bring her chrysalids that they promise will open into moths, and butterflies more beautiful than any she has ever seen, creatures which will whisper certain truths to her, endow her with certain powers. But everything now has begun to draw her attention. It is no longer simply the larvae, the moths, and the butterflies. Now she wants to know frogs, toads, snakes, and spiders, hummingbirds, the parrots and red monkeys screeching in the trees, the habits of the grasses that grow here, the invisible creatures that inhabit the air.

Sirs, for each there is the head, the thorax, the abdomen; the surface of the body divided into platelike areas; there are the mouth parts, the antennae, the feet; and the special hairs that are sensitive to sound.

“Your hands are so delicate, dear,” the Widow Ivenes tells Maria Sibylla that night at supper, “one would never guess from looking at them you are a scientist.”

Pastries and puddings are brought to the table, jellies and preserved fruits, fruit tarts sitting in transparent syrups, cakes made from nut meats, sweet oranges, yellow pineapples, alligator pears, guava, shaddock.

After supper Mathew van der Lee asks permission to enter Maria Sibylla’s study. It is in a ground floor room at the rear—attached to but distant from the other rooms of Surimombo. “Mr. van der Lee. Here, come.” Before he is able to say a word, he is directed to a brownish shape in a mesh cage that looks at first as though it might be a curled bit of bark. But then there is the slightest movement. A kind of weaving from side to side, a tear in the wall at one end, a small but violent movement, the tear opening a little larger, and then a little larger still, until a shape is visible inside, pushing forward through the tear, a damp and matted little thing pushing its way through the opening until it has pushed itself fully out, and then sits and rests there for a time. “There, you see,” is all she says.

Sirs, there is a heart, as well, I have found it lodged in the frontal vessel suspended from the wall of the abdomen. The tiny heart can almost not be seen. But it is, I assure you, there, and it does beat, good sirs, as does our own.

She is near Para Creek. Marta is with her. They are searching inside the edges of the forest wall, looking for unknown genera of blossoms and strange chrysalises, looking and describing and collecting.

Marta walks ahead, hacking with a machete at the dense overgrowth, the frequent surfacing of saw grass. She points to a branch on a tree. Maria Sibylla approaches, rapid and silent, ah, yes, ja, ja. There is a red caterpillar with yellow stripes crawling along the top of the branch. It is feeding on the leaves that grow there. The movement of Maria Sibylla’s hand is sure and quick, scooping the caterpillar from the branch and placing it firmly and unharmed in a jar with a bit of the bark and some leaves from the tree. The caterpillar will be brought back to her study to be kept with the others, the numbers of her specimens growing, in jars with mesh tops, in wire cages, in bottles stoppered with cork.

They turn a corner of the forest into a lush growth of rafflesia, the plant is called the corpse plant because it smells like rotting flesh, the flower is enormous, glowing bright orange, the diameter measured in feet, the thick tubular stem. The Indians extract a liquid from the stem that is used to stop the flow of blood. Marta tells her that it is also used to counteract the bites of snakes, that it quickly reverses the effect of the poison in the bloodstream though the flesh has already grown dark. Marta tells her that the seeds of the peacock flower are used to bring about the menses, that the female slaves swallow the seeds to abort their fetuses, to preserve the unborn child from a life of slavery like their own.

Branches bend and scrape in the breeze, airy and delicate, twisting and turning, continually changing direction, and the shrill shrieks of the howler monkeys high above, flying, torsos twisting and turning, arms outstretched, teeth bared, panting and screaming.

The old woman appears as if out of nowhere, she is all bone and sinewy and nerve cells dancing on the coarse, black flesh of her neck and shoulders, and down along her arms, the heavy bracelets on her wrists, the nerve cells dancing into the bones of her fingers. She is speaking in the Creole that the Dutch call Neger-Englen, and Maria Sibylla can understand some of the words:
tree, hanging or suspended?, comb, bird.
And all the time the old woman is speaking, a sack near her feet is screeching and humping. The old woman reaches inside the sack and firmly holding its neck pulls out a brilliantly colored, huge young macaw. She hands the macaw to Maria Sibylla, who, avoiding its enormous stabbing beak, takes the frantic bird and covers it with a net to calm it. The old woman points to herself and says,
Mama Cato, Mama Cato.
Maria Sibylla repeats the name,
Mama Cato.
The old woman wants to trade for the macaw. She points to the sack filled with supplies that is slung over Maria Sibylla’s shoulder, indicating she wants it emptied on the ground. Maria Sibylla tells Marta to take the sack and empty it on the ground. The old woman points to a bright blue piece of salempouri cloth and a green tree frog in a stoppered jar of liquid. Maria Sibylla nods her agreement to the trade. The leave-taking is abrupt; the old woman quickly disappears back into the jungle. Marta steps forward and begins putting everything back inside the sack, while Maria Sibylla continues holding the now-silent macaw.

Mosquitoes swarm and puncture her skin.

Beads of blood form on the punctures.

The blood is trickling where the mosquitoes have bitten.

And then another and another puncture in her skin.

Sirs, a most uncommon discovery. A butterfly exactly one half male and the other half female, the rear on one side being male, and on the other female.

In the Kerkstraat Gardens there had been butterflies, benign creatures, but not so beautiful as these. These are more beautiful, but not benign.

Somewhere the ants are taking down a tapir. The pig does not stand a chance. As the ants dig in. As the flesh falls away. As the spirit of the beast rushes out through its head. The slight whoosh of sound each time she pins an insect. Her back stiff and straight. Inside the house, the light glows from the candles.

“I have looked at several cane pieces for farming,” Mathew van der Lee announces during the evening meal. “There are some acres south from here, at the mouth of Sara Creek.”

“So far to the south, Mr. van der Lee,” the Widow Ivenes responds with alarm. “We will never see you if you move so far to the south.”

“You will visit often, Widow Ivenes, and spend your time much as you like.”

“The Sara Creek region is not thought safe, Mr. van der Lee,” says Esther Gabay. “The runaways are settled near to there.”

“It is said the numbers of the runaways are few, Madame Gabay.”

“The numbers may be few, Mr. van der Lee,” says Esther Gabay, “but the assaults on the sugar farms are many.”

“And the expeditions of our soldiers fail most often in their efforts to recapture them,” adds Doctor Peter Kolb.

“But there are slaves recaptured every day, Doctor Kolb,” says Mathew van der Lee.

“And every day there are more runaways,” counters the Doctor, “and more violence against the plantations.”

“The violence is not likely to continue,” insists Mathew van der Lee. “How many slaves will risk the punishments if caught?—the beatings, the mutilations. There is one of your colleagues in Paramaribo, Doctor Kolb, whose job it is to amputate limbs from recaptured runaways.”

“The punishments do not deter the runaways,” says Doctor Peter Kolb. “Their sensibility is not as ours, Mr. van der Lee.”

“I am not persuaded of that view,” says Mathew van der Lee.

“Nor am I, I would agree, Mr. van der Lee,” says the Widow Ivenes. And then turning to Maria Sibylla, “What has science to say on the subject?”

“It seems not a matter for science, dear Widow Ivenes.”

“What of your work then?” The Widow persists in drawing Maria Sibylla into the conversation.

“My work progresses, Widow Ivenes.”

“And extraordinary work it is, Madame Sibylla,” says the Widow.

“What is extraordinary,” says Esther Gabay, “is that so much effort should be taken in the interest of insects.”

“There is greater fortune to be made in sugar cane,” says Doctor Peter Kolb.

“My interest here is not in sugar, Doctor Kolb.”

“Madame Sibylla’s interest is to witness nature and not to mine for its material potentiality,” says Mathew van der Lee, staring openly at Maria Sibylla. “She is an artist and a scientist, Doctor Kolb, and those are the interests which occupy her. Much as my own interest in collecting has occupied me. It is true I now seek fortune here in sugar, but I have not lost interest in the creatures of the natural world.”

“Indeed well spoken,” says the Widow Ivenes.

Mr. van der Lee. Come see. He moves closer to her and he sees. It is the moth pupa she brought with her other specimens on the journey from Amsterdam so that she might witness the completion of their transformations. There in a cage in the Surimombo study. The moth has broken through its shell, broken out at last from chrysalis, after these months since its ocean crossing. The small, delicate moth clings to the wires of the cage with its wings wildly flapping. It is the
Phalaena tau,
its wings appearing moist in the light from the candles, and the flames flare up and cast shadows on the wall. Of the moth. Of the woman. And the man.

The next day she has an accident. She reaches out for a caterpillar on the leaf of a tree in the forest near to the main house. It is a vibrant blue-black, inky and depthless, two ruby stripes along the sides of its body. Sensing her presence, it lifts its head, raises it high as if surveying, then lowers and lifts it again, and then it stops with its body rigid and its head raised. She quickly cups it in her palm and is met with a stinging pain so severe she can barely open her hand to release the caterpillar into the cage. Her body flushes hot. Her hand swells to twice its size and she can hardly remain standing. There is the feeling of sinking, of wanting to let go to the ground and let sleep come, of wanting the floor of the forest—green and lush like the sofas of dowagers, thick and soft in rich velvets and muted shades of olive—to receive her. She sinks down to the bottom of the tree trunk and waits for the dizziness to pass. Almost immediately an apprehension wells up inside her. She feels a sensation on her legs. She pulls the fabric of her clothing up and sees small black wood ticks that despite the layers of her skirt have in seconds covered the flesh of her lower legs and are swarming towards her thighs and her abdomen. She leaps up, surprises a giant macaw on a branch not far above, the bird lifts its wings and shrieks, the shrieks soar up through the branches, and the bird follows. She leaps up and walks as quickly as she can, though she is still unsteady and somewhat dizzy from the poison still in her body. Breathing is difficult. The air is thick with moisture, it is all moisture, the air turned fluid, a substance not breathed but swallowed into the lungs, the chest cavity fills and congests. She is moving forward, returning to the Surimombo main house, in any case she wasn’t far, had not gone far. And to the bathing house where she applies an ointment to her legs and her belly following a washing treatment with a brush and harsh liquids. The skin red now, scrubbed raw. Reclaimed. Clean. The bathing house is cool, the water strained through sieves to keep the sand out, the floor polished stone and cool on the bottoms of her feet, and the small black parasitic insects, all to the last one, fallen to the floor, inert, a little pile at her feet, then washed, washed away by the water. She balances herself, holding on with one hand to the wall of the dressing room in the bathing house, the dressing room with its conveniences, small round soaps in smooth clay dishes, jars of salts for soaking, fragrant oils, fresh-cut peacock flowers, a bath sheet for drying her body, a white muslin robe for wrapping up in, the bathing house itself shaded by palmetto leaves falling like folds of fabric over the wooden structure. Now a lizard appears on the outside of the window, it is one of the small lizards that are everywhere in Surinam. Its body is pressed against the mesh that serves as a screen, the sun’s rays make it glow, crystalline, the body transparent, shot through by the sun so that she can see the insides clear and shining, and the long thin vein that runs from its head down to its tail and extends out to each of its four legs and to each of the toes of its webbed feet. Dear lizard, remarkable beast, lit by the afternoon sun, pierced through by a ray of white light, human eyes are blinded by so much light, by so much heat and brightness. She goes over to the window to view the lizard more closely and sees Mathew van der Lee off a ways in the distance; she sees his figure in the white sun, against the bleached out grasses near the sugar fields. He is walking with his hands clasped behind his back. Later, he will ask if he might accompany her again up the coast to the ocean on one of her hunts there for shells. They will set out as if on a picnic, carrying charcoals and vellums, specimen boxes and killing jars. They will walk over sand strewn with branches and mollusk shells, nests of seaweed, dead fish, ghost crabs heaped together on the shore. She will walk erect with her back straight, with her shoes caked with mud and the bottom of her dress wet and dragging. Mathew van der Lee will make a lighthearted comment about the mud on her shoes, and just as he does his own feet will sink some inches into the ground. He will reach out as if to touch her when she looks down at his feet, but then will quickly withdraw his arm.