Under the Wide and Starry Sky (44 page)

Black flies buzzed at the bare shoulders and back of the beachcomber, who was dividing up his meat with a small knife in order to share it with Louis. He was probably thirty or so but looked to be a decade older. An American sailor who had deserted, probably. A decent enough fellow turned profligate by the bottle, which he offered to Louis repeatedly. “You can go over to the mission, get a square meal,” he said as he handed over a piece of the sausage. “Looks like you could use it.”

Louis ate and drank. “You've been traveling for a while?”

The man paused before answering, as if he heard judgment in the question. He sat up, proud. “Nobody tells me when to get up, where to go to work, or what to wear. Nobody yappin' in my ear.” The man sized up Louis, who leaned on an elbow in the sand. “It's a good life, ain't it? Fellas like us got nothin' to lose.”

Evening fell in Apia. The Pacific Ocean stretched out flat and blue, like an invitation.

Louis stood up, breathed deep the salty harbor air, and felt a kind of joy rush into his limbs.
I'm getting on that boat.

Louis paused on his way home from Apia. He had ridden slowly up the mountain with dread pressing upon him like a heavy wood yoke. He dismounted to collect himself and, in the gloaming, noticed birds at the edge of the bush eating fat nutmeg fruits fallen from trees. He gathered some as he listened to the roar of insects coming from the dark, damp forest.

Pushing on, he caught sight in the distance of yellow lights shining through Vailima's windows. He had explained to Talolo what “home fires” meant to a Scotsman and how it pleased him to see the radiant windows when he rode from town, especially on a night when there was little moonlight. No Samoan needed an explanation of home fires, least of all Talolo. But after their conversation, Louis could count on lantern glow to pierce the darkness of the hillside and cheer him home.

The sight of the glowing windows eased his dismay only slightly. He had been away for two days. He'd awakened this morning in Moors's house with the trader standing over him and a searing pain in his temples. “Do I have an arrow through my head?” Louis had groaned.

“Must have been quite a party you found last night.” Moors grinned. “I've got hot water in the tub for you, and there's a clean set of clothes on the chair.”

When the trader left the room, Louis tried to recollect the events of last night. He recalled hanging lanterns and singing. He'd made it onto the boat, or maybe he'd made it only into a bar. There had been a switch to whisky; he could still taste it in his mouth. A fuzzy image came to him of being escorted out of someplace with his elbows secured by strangers.

“How did I end up here?” he asked Moors over breakfast.

“A gentleman from the beach accompanied you to my door.”

Louis began to apologize, but his friend waved him off before he could finish.

“You have suffered enough in your life, old man. God knows you deserve a little pleasure. Stay as long as you wish. I sent my boy up to Vailima this morning to let them know where you are.”

“Thank you.”

“We have dinner guests this evening. A crowd you would like—”

“No, no. I'll do something useful with my visit to town—go talk to the English and American consuls again about Mata'afa. It will be futile. And then I shall go back.”

Moors looked over his spectacles. “Nassau,” he said. “It would be so easy.”

“Yes,” Louis muttered. “Yes.”

When Louis came through the paddock gate, he found Talolo holding a lantern. “Love,” the man greeted Louis. “Did you eat in Apia?”

“Enough.” He tipped his hat to Talolo.

“Manuia lau tōfāga',”
Talolo said.
May you sleep like a noble.

When Louis entered the house, he found Belle at the dining room table, where she'd just finished eating. “How is she?” he asked.

“Louis. You're back.” Belle stood up. “There's plenty of food here. Sit down and eat,” she said in a pleasant enough voice. If she wondered about his absence, she gave no sign. “Mama has quieted down considerably. The medicine has left her in a stupor.”

“Go rest. I'll take over.” He collected a leg off the roasted chicken sitting on a platter and gathered up the abandoned
Weir
manuscript from his study so he could review it while Fanny slept. When he entered her bedroom, he found her dozing, looking peaceful. He was struck by how her hands, small as a child's, were still lovely, even after the battering they'd taken over the years.

He walked around the perimeter of the room, observing Fanny's things, orderly now. There was a worktable along one wall, on which her most recent preoccupations were displayed. Pressed leaves and flowers shared a corner with poetry and plant identification books; feathers and bird sketches with notes claimed another corner. A lantern, lit faithfully by Lafaele to frighten lingering spirits, illuminated an arrangement of turtle shell fishhooks suspended from strips of woven cloth. Next to it lay her silver medal from art school and a carefully preserved lock of Hervey's blond hair.

Fanny's mind was like her room, a cabinet of curiosities. He had fallen in love with the treasures he found in that exotic interior. Glancing around, he noticed her diary sitting on the dresser. He retrieved it and read quickly, looking for clues in the past six months that might shed some light on why Fanny's mind had broken.

The diary was all ordinary talk about the garden, the natives, influenza. He smelled a whiff of resentment toward his mother in one part. A good deal of bitterness toward Joe Strong. Mostly, it was a record of her daily life at Vailima. She talked about trying out scent making and planting India rubber as a crop to sell. There were lists: remedies she had used on a parade of sick people; things she needed, such as hurricane shutters, horse shoes, new bridles to replace the rotted and broken ones, and a saddle she wanted to buy for Belle. She wrote about seeds and harvests, from tree onions to watermelons.

She mentioned one wild Irishman on the island as a “delicious creature.” My God, did she notice such things? She never said so aloud. She wrote of the animals. And she quoted him. “Louis says I have the ‘soul of a peasant.'” Weeks later, she talked of it again.

Louis remembered their conversation. Why on earth had he said such a despicable thing? He breathed deep at the memory. He had spat out the bitter remark because she'd interfered in his work again. He had buckled under her haranguing but carried deep resentment. When he struck back with the peasant business, though, he attacked the very heart of her frailty. Always, since he'd first known her, she had wanted to live a creative life.

Did all women married to well-known men struggle for recognition? It occurred to him that his friends thought her greatest achievement was keeping him alive. They didn't care about her other qualities. It was a sad truth that while his illness had conferred on him an air of heroism, it had marked Fanny, his nurse, as a menial. He'd always held to the idea that she didn't give a damn what people thought of her. She seemed bull-strong. He had learned rather late in the game that Fanny was the kind of woman who needed building up. But then everybody needed praise. The question was:
Can a person go mad from want of it?

A muted cry rose from Fanny while she slept. It shook Louis nearly as much as the first time her wailing had jolted loose his memory of those anguished exiles he'd witnessed in the Hebrides. Back then, the keening of a distraught woman made clear to him the anguish of the displaced, in particular the banished Highlanders. He had been writing about that period of Scottish history ever since. Now Fanny's cry brought to him uncomfortable questions. All this time, had he pitied the downtrodden, ancient Highlanders more than he'd thought about his own wife's suffering? Had Fanny gone mad from being uprooted so often? Time and again, the sweet nests she made had been pulled out from under her as she endured one more leavetaking. She was an earthbound person, seasick from the moment she set foot on a boat. Was it any wonder she had cracked after two years of cruising the Pacific? He recalled the phrase Henry had used to describe poor Arrick:
Fa'ape'ape'a e lē tu.
He is like a swiftlet.
He can never rest, for he has no home.
Fanny uttered no complaint, but in staying by his side, by pursuing health for him—their holy grail—she had made herself every inch the exile he was.

Louis felt his face go hot with shame.
Dear God, what an ass I am.

He noticed her stirring. She sat up in bed, looked at him, and said, “How nice you look in that shirt, Louis.” It startled him. It was as if the woman he'd known in 1876 had come to call.

“Why, thank you. It belongs to Moors. How are you feeling?”

She blinked but didn't answer, only stared impassively into space.

Louis sighed. It wasn't going to be simple. He didn't know from whence her troubles came. What mattered was to get her well. To sift through memories seeking proof of his wife's madness would be to forget her well of wisdom, compassion, and courage.

He sat next to the bed. “I am in your chair, Fan, and here I sit on my hands,” he said. “After all the doctoring and solace you have given me, I don't know what to do to make you better.” He lifted his satchel and put it on his lap. “I brought you something. Seeds from the nutmeg trees in the forest.” He placed the fruits on the bedside trunk, where a plate of untouched food rested. Then he pulled from the bag the manuscript. “I have begun a new novel called
Weir of Hermiston.
Would you like to hear a bit of it?”

Fanny showed no sign that she heard him. Her pupils were constricted black dots in gold-streaked pools.

“I'm sorry I've hurt you,” he said. “I'm sorry we hurt each other. I don't suppose we're different from most married people. You try to run me like a perambulator, and I treat you—I have at times treated you so unkindly. We're better than that.”

Louis climbed into her bed and sat on the opposite end, facing her. “It is only a beginning, Fan, but I need your thoughts on it.” He lifted the first page of the manuscript and began to read. “‘In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather …'”

In the weeks that followed, the household held its breath as it watched and waited.

“She's better, she really is,” Louis said one day. “She was so sweet last evening. We talked about real things, about her sister Nellie. She's perfectly sensible again.”

“Louis, she's not,” Belle insisted. “She didn't eat breakfast or lunch today. Doesn't even smoke. Just sits and stares.”

“I'm going to take her out for a walk in the garden. Where is she now?”

“Sitting on the verandah with Lloyd.”

Louis collected Fanny and walked with her out into her vegetable plots. The sun blazed on him as he followed behind the small barefoot figure who carried an umbrella over her head. He watched her examine the rows of plants as if she were Napoleon inspecting troops.

“I think you are much better,” he said.

“The eggplants are looking poorly. But see Lafaele's cabbages? They're getting nice and fat.”

“Fanny. Love. Stop for a moment, talk to me. Help me understand.”

She looked up at him and shaded her eyes with her hand.

“Did you have hallucinations before?” he asked.

“A couple of times.”

“Why did you never tell me?”

“Those visions came after terrible events. I never expected they would happen again.”

“Do you remember the story you told me about when you were a little girl?” he asked. “You used to swing on the screen door, holding tight to the doorknob. You thought the reason people died was that they let go of their hold on things, and the trick to staying alive was hanging on to something. You thought you could fend off death through pure force of will. I think you have pushed your way through hard times with your amazing will. But there are things in life that can't be brought to heel.”

She pressed her lips together and turned her face toward the field.

“You blame yourself for Hervey, don't you? Even now.”

Her features collapsed. “I wasn't paying enough attention. I relaxed, and then he was gone. If I had—”

He took her hand and held it. “You did the best you could, Fan. Lay it down now.”

They walked on through the rows until she stopped and turned to him once more. “What am I to do?” she said, her eyes overflowing with tears. “I see bad things coming, and I want to warn off people.”

“Everyone must make mistakes. It's how we learn.”

“I never felt I was allowed them. For so long, with your health, there was no room for a mistake.”

“Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson,” he said, “you've kept me breathing against the odds, and I owe you my life. Look at me. Am I not the very picture of health? Now it's time to rest and make yourself well.”

She dropped the umbrella and put her arms around his waist.

“Fanny, Fanny,” he murmured, patting her back. “How is it you can be so fearless in the face of real danger, and yet at other times be afraid of mere possibilities?”

During the next few days, Fanny turned further inward, staying in her room, getting up from her chair or bed only to look through the window. He knew then that she could not be quickly pulled from the dark place she had entered. But he had seen her eyes brighten a few times in response to his little attentions.

He hadn't any idea how one was supposed to help a loved one find her way out of such darkness.
What have I to fight against so unpitying an enemy? Only kindness.
Perhaps with unbridled, importunate, violent kindness, he could woo Fanny back from this hell.

He stayed with her each afternoon and read what he had written during the morning. Some days he pinned a poem to her bed curtain, where she would discover it upon waking. Once when he found her standing at the window, head bent in concentration, he knew she was reading his latest offering.

Louis watched from the doorway as Fanny read the lines slowly, then lifted her mattress and slipped the poem under it.