Ship Fever (9 page)

When the woman smiled her teeth were perfectly white and straight. “Coffee?” she said. Zaga nodded and the woman summoned her assistant.

Three days before they were due to leave the Andes, a blizzard cut them off from the outside world. No traffic arrived or departed and there was nothing to do but wait. Joel and the children still skied, masked in goggles and wrapped in extra
clothes, delighted at their extended vacation. Zaga sat, more and more frantic, at a table by the window in the lounge of the Hotel Portillo. Dr. Sepulveda, also trapped by the blizzard and unable to return to his home in Santiago, sometimes joined her. The first time he appeared at her table, he talked about the weather for a while and then fell silent and studied her face.

“You must be Slavic,” he said. “With those cheekbones and that name.” He lit a cigarette and turned from her face to the mountain. “Let me guess,” he said. “Slovenian royalty. Ukrainian landowners. White Russian aristocrats fleeing the Bolsheviks.”

“Lithuanian potato-and-cabbage peasants,” she admitted. Was he teasing her? She had seen faces like his in the paintings of Spanish nobility that hung in the museum at home. “My parents were born in Philadelphia, but only just. I have a brother who's a bricklayer, like my father; another who's a cop. The big success is Timothy—he's an optometrist. My sister works part-time in a bakery, and I was working as a secretary in an art gallery when I met Joel.”

“Really,” the doctor said. “Among the modern languages, Lithuanian is the one most closely related to Sanskrit.”

“I'll have to take your word for that,” she said. “I hardly remember any of it.”

“But your grandparents…?”

“They never learned English well.”

Outside, beyond the windows, the snow fell and fell and fell. The afternoon had only just started and there were hours to kill before Joel and the children returned from the slopes. There was nothing to do but talk, and so when Dr. Sepulveda said, “And what about your husband?” she answered him more fully than she might otherwise have done.

“Joel's grandfather was a chemist,” she said. “He synthesized a drug used to treat ulcers, and then he started a pharmaceutical company to manufacture it. The family still owns most of
the stock.” When she mentioned the name of the company Dr. Sepulveda raised an eyebrow in recognition.

“Your husband runs it?”

“One of his cousins. But Joel's on the board of directors, of course, and he works there—all the cousins do. Joel's the vice-president for community relations.”

“What does that mean?”

“He's the do-gooder,” Zaga said. She would have given anything for a bottle of wine, green and slim on the table between them, but her doctor at home had forbidden alcohol. “He oversees all the nonbusiness stuff,” she said. “The sports programs they sponsor, and the scholarships and grants and the corporate art program. Joel buys contemporary art for the offices, and he collects some privately.”

“Very enlightened,” the doctor murmured. “He must have a discriminating eye.”

“And you?” Zaga said. “Are you married?”

He ordered more coffee for himself and, without consulting her, removed her cup and replaced it with a glass of fresh juice. “You shouldn't be having so much caffeine,” he said. “Not in your condition.” Then he turned to the window, where the bright figures of the skiers flashed against the snow. “Charles Darwin came by here,” he said—the first time he mentioned that name, the first hint she had of the stories that were to come. “A century and a half ago, when these mountains were wilderness. He walked through the pass in the Cordillera near here, past Aconcagua and into Mendoza. Did you know that? If it wasn't snowing so hard, you could see the tip of Aconcagua from your chair.”

Aconcagua
; that chain of gentle, open-mouthed vowels could not be more different than what she remembered of her grandparents' speech. She rolled the word around in her mouth, and only when Dr. Sepulveda said, “Zaga?” did she hear the link to her own name.

The woman at the museum was very persuasive and Zaga, after an argument with her broker and a long phone call from her lawyer, wrote a substantial check. It was thrilling, inking that row of figures onto the smooth green paper. And she felt sure that Joel would have been pleased—he would have left the museum the funds to maintain the paintings had he not been overscrupulous about providing for her. But she had everything she needed. When her sister Marianna came to see the condominium, Zaga blithely told her about her gift.

“
How
much money?” Marianna said. “You gave that much to
strangers?
”

Zaga explained the situation: how there was money left from the sale of the house, how the museum needed it. “I'm fine,” she told her sister. “Joel left me in good shape.”

But Marianna wasn't worried about Zaga's financial stability. “You might have thought of
us,
” she said, aggrieved and pinkfaced, and then all the resentment she'd felt since Zaga's marriage came pouring out. Zaga, she said, had not been sufficiently generous.

“Look at your clothes,” she said. Zaga could not see much difference between her blouse and jacket and Marianna's pretty sweater. “Look at your cars.”

“I only kept one,” Zaga protested. “Remember when I gave Dad the Oldsmobile?”

“Oh, please,” Marianna said. “Big deal.” And when Zaga reminded her that she and Joel had paid the hospital bills for her father's final illness, and also the live-in housekeeper who had made possible her mother's last days at home, Marianna only made a face. “What did that cost you?” she said. “What did you have to give up? Nothing.”

“I had to ask Joel every time—you think that was easy?”

Marianna flicked her hand in front of her face, as if she were
waving away a gnat. “Joel was a weenie,” she said impatiently. “If you'll pardon me for saying so. We all knew he'd do whatever you asked. But things are different now. My kids are headed for college in just a few years, and Teddy and I don't have any idea where we're going to scrape the tuition from—how do you think it makes us feel, watching you give that kind of money to a museum?”

“I didn't know you felt like that,” Zaga said, unwilling to admit how impulsive her gift had been. “The museum was very important to Joel.”

“What's important is family,” Marianna said. “If you ever came home, you might have some idea what was going on.”

“I visited as much as I could,” Zaga said. But she knew that this was not precisely true. Within a few years of her marriage to Joel, the row houses and narrow streets of her family's neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia had come to seem unpleasant. Christmas days they had spent with Joel's family, but on Christmas Eves they went to her parents' house, where all her relatives gathered. Each year she'd been more uncomfortable turning off Roosevelt Boulevard and heading into the blocks where she'd grown up. Reindeer and sleds on the shabby roofs, shrubs wound with colored bulbs and children everywhere. The contrast with Merion, where her neighbors hung small wreaths on their front doors and framed trees between half-drawn curtains in front of picture windows, had made her queasy. Joel had never mentioned the garish decorations or been less than courteous to her family, but she had always imagined that he suppressed his distaste only out of kindness. Rob and Alicia had sometimes giggled out loud.

Abashed, Zaga promised her sister that the next time she felt like giving money away she would keep her family in mind.

Zaga would not have said she knew Dr. Sepulveda well: during their afternoons in the hotel lounge she learned only the
barest facts of his life. He was a widower, he had three grown sons. He had an apartment in Santiago and, during the ski season, a suite of rooms at the Hotel Portillo, which he received in exchange for his services as hotel doctor. He didn't ski but he loved the mountains, and he said he enjoyed the hotel's cosmopolitan clientele.

He didn't ask Zaga any more questions about her life and he seldom talked about himself, but he was a pleasant companion, full of interesting tales. In 1835, he told her, his great-great-grandfather had shown Darwin around what existed of Santiago and had helped with arrangements for Darwin's journey over the Portillo pass. “They were friends,” he said. “These stories have come down through my family. I still have first editions of the journals Darwin published.” The last Darwin story he told her, on the day before the blizzard ended, was the most unusual.

“I've never been able to get this story out of my mind,” he said. As he spoke he took a small black camera from his leather bag. On the
Beagle,
he said, the ship that had carried Darwin and his companions around South America, “—on that ship were three Fuegians, natives of Tierra del Fuego who'd been away from their home for years.”

FitzRoy, the
Beagle's
commander, had made an earlier visit to Tierra del Fuego, during which some Fuegians had stolen a whaleboat from him. In retaliation, FitzRoy had taken two men and a young girl hostage. Later he added a little boy, whom he bought from his family for the price of a pearl button. The Fuegians seemed happy aboard the ship, and FitzRoy took the four of them back to England with him.

Dr. Sepulveda cradled the camera in his left hand as he explained how one of the men had died of smallpox while the other, whom FitzRoy had named York Minster, survived. The girl, named Fuegia Basket, thrived, and so did the boy, called
Jemmy Button after his purchase price. “They learned a good deal of English,” the doctor said. “They adopted English dress and were quite the wonder of London for a while. The queen met them and gave Fuegia Basket a ring.”

But the Fuegians weren't happy, the doctor said, and FitzRoy was no longer sure that he'd done the right thing in taking them from their native land. And so when he set off on his second voyage—the one on which Darwin was present—he carried the Fuegians with him, along with a missionary and a huge store of goods donated by a missionary society. He had hopes that Jemmy and Fuegia and York might teach their tribes to welcome Englishmen. Then a shipwrecked sailor or a passing stranger might not have to fear for his life.

“Darwin was quite a young man then,” the doctor said. “Your age, maybe a little younger—twenty-three, twenty-four. He found the Fuegians very interesting and was particularly fond of Jemmy Button, whom he describes as sweet-tempered and amusing. He expected a great reunion when they finally came on Jemmy's tribe, but the tribe was hostile and unwelcoming. Jemmy, who had forgotten how to speak his own language, had changed so much that his family hardly recognized him.

“FitzRoy's crew unloaded the gifts of the missionary society and showed the members of Jemmy's tribe how to use a shovel and a hoe,” Dr. Sepulveda said. “Then they packed up and went off to do some botanizing. They left Jemmy behind, along with the missionary and York and Fuegia. A few weeks later they returned to find the gifts demolished and scattered among the tribe. York and Fuegia were all right, but Jemmy was miserable and the missionary, who was terrified, gave up his plans and sailed off with the
Beagle
when it left again.”

The story made Zaga restless, as did the camera glinting darkly in Dr. Sepulveda's hand, but he seemed compelled to go on talking. In his journal, the doctor said, Darwin recorded his
suspicions that Jemmy would have been glad to rejoin the ship along with the missionary. He'd been civilized, he noted; perhaps he would have liked to retain his new habits.

A year later, when the
Beagle
returned to the area, a canoe headed out to greet the ship. A long-haired man wearing nothing but a scrap of sealskin was washing the paint from his face while a woman paddled. No one recognized the man until he hailed FitzRoy and Darwin, and then they saw that this ragged stranger was the Jemmy they'd left, plump and clean and clothed, all those months ago.

He still remembered the English he'd learned and he told FitzRoy and Darwin that he was very happy now. He had plenty to eat, he had found a wife, he liked his family. And although York and Fuegia had run away with the few belongings his tribe hadn't already taken, he claimed to be content.

Jemmy gave FitzRoy an otter skin and Darwin a pair of spearheads. Then he returned to his canoe and paddled away. When he reached the shore he lit a bonfire. The last sign Darwin saw of him was the long and wistful column of smoke outlined against the horizon.

Dr. Sepulveda paused and sipped his coffee. In the Andes, he explained, Darwin had mused on the story of Jemmy Button, and so had he. Before Zaga could smile, he held the camera in front of his face and clicked the shutter: “For your baby,” he said. He gestured toward her waist and spoke a few words in Spanish; perhaps he addressed her child. Then he said, “Think of that. Jemmy Button: captured, exiled, re-educated; then returned, abused by his family, finally re-accepted. Was he happy? Or was he saying that as a way to spite his captors? Darwin never knew.”

Zaga imagined how she might look through his lens, surrounded by wealthy skiers from France and Spain, California and Brazil. Small, slight, insignificant. Ill-bred and poorly educated. “Are
you
happy?” she asked the doctor. He replied, “Are you?”

Despite her promise to Marianna, Zaga continued to give money away. It was a fever that came over her. It was a burning in her fingertips, which could only be relieved by writing checks. She gave money to the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Shriners, Kiwanis. Her money seemed like a dead skin, and the more she shed the better she felt. “Visit lawyer,” she wrote on her list of things to do. “Set up college funds for the kids.” But meanwhile she gave to political candidates, medical research foundations, slim girls in jeans begging funds to save the whales. Her list was still by the phone when Rob called. It was the first time she'd heard from either him or Alicia since her move.