Easter Island (43 page)

“Well, I’m holding out for an
umu
feast.”

Greer slid a slice of peach into her mouth and let the syrup coat her tongue. “You know, I’ve wanted to say something to Mahina. About her husband.”

“Not an easy topic.”

“She’s a friend, though. I should be able to say something.”

“What would you say?”

“I don’t know. That she should get herself a ticket to Santiago, to Buenos Aires, to Rio, and she should see the world, get on with her life. I see Mahina and Ramon on a romantic getaway, sipping tropical drinks, staying at a hotel where
they
get served breakfast every morning and someone comes to clean
their
room.”

“I believe the English word for this kind of wish is
meddling.
”

“Caring.”

“Ah, yes. Another lesson in Greer English. I’ll soon be fluent.”

“Meddling is a manifestation of caring. There. A compromise.”

“Very well,” said Vicente. “But where do you see yourself? Where do
you
want to go?”

“Good question.”

Vicente now concentrated on his peaches, deftly quartering each one as he spoke. “I mean, how long do you think you will stay?”

“On the island? I don’t know.” It was odd she hadn’t figured this out yet. Her research was nearing an end, but the idea of going home, to Marblehead, seemed unreal; her house, her life there, all felt impossibly distant. “When everything is wrapped up, I guess. I’m just waiting to hear about the fossil. If I can get confirmation on the species, I can write up my results.”

“And then you are free to go?”

“Not free,” she said. “But yes, then I can go.”

The next day Greer felt strong enough to go back to the lab to check on her samples, to make sure everything was in order. She decided to review her notebooks and any untouched reading materials, settling in at one of her lab tables.

The last European account was from the young Pierre Loti, a Frenchman who had visited in 1872, almost a century after Captain Cook. Loti’s tone was different from other explorers’. Here was a writer, a poet, who came seeking wonder.

I went ashore there years ago in my green youth from a sailing frigate, after days of strong wind and obscuring clouds; there has remained with me the recollection of a half fantastic land, a land of dreams.

Like all the other visitors, Loti finds his scarves and hats in great demand. He bemoans the theft of a red velvet hat with brass buttons, snatched from his head by a small boy who breaks into song. But Loti is welcomed by the Rapa Nui in a way others haven’t been. When touring the island, Loti finds himself sleepy and is taken by an islander to rest in a hut.

The roof of reeds which shelters me is sustained by palm branches—but where did they get them since their island is without trees and has hardly any vegetation beyond reeds and grapes. In this small space, hardly a meter and a half high by four meters long a thousand things are carefully suspended; little idols of black wood which are engraved with coarse enameling, lances with points of sharpened obsidian, paddles carved with human figures, feather headdresses, ornaments for the dance or for combat and some utensils of various shapes, of use unknown to me which all seem extremely ancient. . . .

But when you think of it, all this dried out wood of their war clubs and their gods, where does it come from? And their cats, their rabbits? . . . The mice that stroll around the houses everywhere. I don’t suppose anybody brought them. Where did they come from? The slightest things on this isolated island bring up unanswered questions: one is amazed that there exists a flora and a fauna.

Loti then drifts off to sleep.

Waking like that in the savage’s dreary nest I felt a feeling of extreme homesickness. I felt far away, farther away than ever and lost. And I was taken with that extreme anguish which comes with island sickness and no place in the world would have given it to me so acutely as right here, the immensity of the austral seas round about me. . . .

Greer set the book down; Loti was right. She remembered that first day in the Rano Aroi crater, standing in the reeds. Even in this “land of dreams” she had felt the momentary anguish of solitude. And how could she not? The island was like a thing of myths, a fear made physical: solitude itself. And that perhaps was one of the reasons she’d come, to explore the geography of her loneliness.

Voices came from the hallway. Isabel and Sven. She could hear the thump of boots approach her door. There was a knock, a muffled laugh, another knock.

“Open.”

“Ah, back to work! Definitely a full recovery!” said Sven. He moved in and hugged her. “No surprise, though. You had the best of care.”

“I did,” she said, feeling herself smile. Even on this isolated island she had found a community: people who checked in on her, acquaintances, friends. She’d nearly completed her first solo fieldwork. She was coming to terms with what Thomas had done. What more did she need?

“When they first carried you back to Mahina’s you looked so awful. Really, like a corpse.”

“Thanks, Sven.”

“And now, color in your cheeks! You had no color. I’m telling you, Greer. Nothing.”

“Well, I’ve been outside, moving around. I pretty much feel back to normal.”

“We are very happy for that,” said Isabel, clasping Sven’s hand. She was easily a foot shorter than he was, and a decade older, but these differences somehow produced a sense of balance.

“We’re off for a tour,” said Isabel. “Will you join us?”

“Tour of what?”

“The island!”

“Is there really anything you haven’t yet seen?”

“Oh,” said Isabel, “we’ve not explored all the coast, the craters. I have always explored on paper. Today, Sven will take me to explore on foot.”

At this moment Greer realized how Isabel was dressed—hiking boots, khaki shorts, and Sven’s yellow T-shirt, too large, billowing over her belt:
Swede e π
.

“I’m going to stay put and read. But thanks.”

“If you need anything,” said Sven, “let us know. And if you don’t, make something up. Now that Burke-Jones is gone, things feel slow around here.”

As they left, she could hear Sven singing in the hallway.

Greer returned to the final section of Loti’s account, when an improvised chariot was assembled in the frigate’s launch and Loti’s shipmates, one hundred of them, began to remove a
moai
. The islanders made no objection, as though the statue were valueless. Roggeveen, one hundred and fifty years earlier, had seen fires lit before the idols and islanders kneeling before them in veneration. Loti sees something different:

A great group followed us this morning across the wet grass of the plain, and once arrived they start to dance like dervishes, lightfooted with their hair blowing out in the wind, naked and reddish, delicately tinted blue by their tattooing, their slender bodies moving against the brown stones and the black horizons; they dance, they dance over the enormous figures, placing their toes against the faces of the monsters, kicking them noiselessly in the nose and cheeks. I can’t understand what they are singing in the constant racket of the gusts of wind and the surf.

The people of Rapa Nui, who venerate so many fetishes and little gods, seem to have no respect for the tombs. They don’t remember the dead sleeping below them.

Or perhaps, thought Greer, they did remember the dead below them. And perhaps they remembered something that made them want to dance across the faces of their ancestors. Might they have felt rage at the dead?

25

“She’s upset about what I said to her,” Edward says. “She’s gone to sulk. Perhaps she’s gone to the excavation site. She liked it there. But she didn’t take her pony. If she’s been walking she’s probably hurt. I’ve done this. This is my fault.”

“Stop it,” says Elsa. “Let’s just find her.”

They ride their ponies in separate directions, away from the campsite, shouting Alice’s name. Elsa follows the southern coast to Hanga Roa, hoping Alice will have at least kept along the path. She passes the fallen statues at Tongariki as the sun begins to fall, dimming the sea, the grass.

There is nowhere to hide on this island except the caves, and Alice has always hated the caves. She must be somewhere, waiting, exposed, hoping to be seen and called back. After all these years, it is as if Alice simply wants to be pinched, as though her life has been one long trance she is asking to be summoned from.

Alice
wants
them to come after her.

The full moon washes the landscape white, but Elsa doesn’t need it. How many times she has ridden this path to the village—alone, with Alice, with Biscuit Tin just days before. This land, its distances, have become a part of her.

“Allie!” she calls.

As the horse plods forward through the night, Elsa feels as though this one search is her entire life. This pursuit of Alice—it seems she has lived this instant for twenty-four years. So Alice must be all right, then; Alice will be found. That is always the ending.

Finally, on the cliff above the harbor at Vinapu, Elsa spots a figure—Biscuit Tin, arms slack at his side, staring at the sea.

“Poki!”
Elsa shouts, leaping down from her pony, running to him. “
Poki,
have you seen Alice? Alice. Where is she?”

Slowly, the boy raises his arm and points toward the water. He does not turn to look at her.

“In the water? Alice is in the water?
Vai? Poki! Vai!
Alice!” She grabs the boy by the collar, shakes him wildly until she sees that he is crying. She releases her grip, lets his body settle.

“
Poki,
where is Alice?”

He points again, down to the water, to where the fleet was anchored, to where the supply boat stacked with crates was lashed to the jetty.

Elsa looks out at the ocean, and stumbles back.

26

When Greer returned from the lab, several children were perched beside the
residencial
sign, peering through the bushes; they scattered immediately at her approach. Then she heard a wave of voices in the courtyard, the sound of doors slamming, of feet racing along the porch.

“Qué lástima!”
It was Mahina’s voice, coming from inside. She sounded distressed.
“Qué lástima.”

Greer had never seen the main room so crowded. At the far end, the two wicker wing chairs had been pushed together and Isabel lay across them in her khaki shorts and Sven’s soiled shirt. Her long hair was matted, her makeup faded. She was sharing a cigarette with Sven, who held her hand. Across from them, a uniformed carabinero was at Mahina’s desk, his olive beret resting before him, and he was writing in a notebook. He was young, with a thick curled mustache that looked fake amid his delicate features. Luka Tepano sat on the floor in the corner, his knees held to his chest. He seemed entirely disengaged from the commotion. Mahina was moving between them all, offering reassurances, except to the carabinero, whose appropriation of her desk she clearly found insulting.

“Doctora!”
Mahina had just seen her.

“What happened?”

“Can you get us a drink of something strong?” Sven called.

“In the kitchen,” said Mahina, who was keeping her eye on the carabinero
.
“You get the pisco.”

Greer quickly went to the kitchen, searched the pantry for the bottle, and brought it back to the lobby.

After Isabel and Sven had each taken a long drink, the carabinero stopped writing.
“Su historia, Señor Urstedt, lentamente.”
He then turned to Mahina and told her to translate.

Mahina winced at this order, but clearly felt the gravity of the situation outweighed her distaste for Chilean authority.
“Sí,”
she said, disappearing through the beaded curtain. She returned with a chair and seated herself across from the carabinero.

Sven sat on the floor beside Isabel, set the bottle of pisco down, and ran his free hand through his hair. “As I tried to say before, we got the horses from Chico and set out to explore the coast. About halfway to Anakena it begins to cloud over, so we get off the path and look for a cave. We find an opening in the rock face. We have our backpacks with our lunch, so we figure we’ll avoid the rain and have our sandwiches there. One thing leads to another, we start . . .” At this Sven’s eyes floated up to Isabel, who blushed. “Anyway, then something scurries toward us, like it came from the outside. Isabel leaps up because she’s sure it’s a rodent. Then, again, something moves in the darkness and I start feeling around on the ground. Well, it turns out to be a rock. This is good because it’s not a rodent, bad because who the hell is throwing stones at us. We hear somebody whistling and then comes another stone. So we get dressed, grab our packs, and head for the light. And at the entrance I see poor old Luka Tepano holding one of his plates. And then I realize where we are. ‘Luka, I’m sorry,’ I tell him, ‘we didn’t know this was her cave.’ But Luka just sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles. He starts to look very upset, so I ask him what’s the matter but he just keeps looking at the cave. Then Isabel starts to feel uneasy about the whole thing, keeps asking me what’s wrong with him. I ask Luka if he wants me to go in there with him but he just keeps staring at the cave. So I take him by the arm, but he won’t budge. I don’t think he’d ever entered. So I told him to wait there, and I got my flashlight and headed in alone.”

Mahina translated this last phrase, the carabinero copied it in his notebook, and an awkward silence followed.

“Y después?”
asked the carabinero.

Isabel shook her head. Sven looked over at Luka, “That’s all. Then I came out and told him she was
muerte
. I sent Isabel to fetch you.”

Mahina translated; the carabinero surveyed the room and said,
“Bueno.”
When finally he made his way out, Mahina closed the door firmly behind him and resumed her seat behind the desk.