Easter Island (45 page)

Elsa runs down to the water, strains her eyes. The schooner is nowhere in sight. The dinghy is gone. She hikes up to the cliff above the beach, and looks out: still nothing, only the dark and endless sea. She crumples the note and tosses it down toward the water, but the wind hurls it back toward the shore until it skips along the rim of sand.

She begins to climb down, then stops and lets her body find the cold face of rock. She grabs the rough edges with her hands and leans all her weight forward. She taps her forehead against the hard wall, then again, harder, until it begins to soothe her.

“Alice,” she whispers.

Edward, alone in the boat, has gone west.

But the fleet steamed in the opposite direction, toward Chile, then to Argentina, where they plan to invade the Falkland Islands.

The boy has followed her, moves toward her now, shaking with alarm. She closes her eyes, continues to tap her head against rock, and feels, for the first time, his fingers clasp her hand.

28

“I have an idea,” said Vicente.

He and Greer were sitting on the stone wall above the
caleta,
drinking pisco sours. It was the usual night for the researchers’ dinner, but Sven went out alone with Isabel, and Burke-Jones was gone, his lab room emptied. “It is about Admiral von Spee. I am going to write a book about him. About his journey, trying to get home to Germany. It would begin in China, of course, when the war broke out. With his squadron in Tsingtao. Did you know that the route von Spee and his squadron traveled to Rapa Nui was a similar path to the great Polynesian migration?”

“You never told me that,” said Greer. “But what about the
rongorongo
?”

“It is not forsaken; I will simply put it aside for now. I’d always believed we would find more tablets; I’d hoped the answer to deciphering would come that way.” He seemed a bit embarrassed. “I envy you your work, Greer. Your commitment to one subject. It’s a very hard thing to find in this life. And right now von Spee holds my attention and I must pursue it. Many people know the story of the Battle of the Falklands, but not what led up to it.”

“Sounds like the Germany trip is on, then.” Vicente had been speaking of a full investigation into von Spee’s life.

“I feel I must go. But only for a short time. And you? Where will you be?”

“Well, I went ahead and applied for that National Geo research grant. Keep your fingers crossed. I should hear any day now.”

“Ah, Surtsey. It should be fascinating.”

“An island smaller and less populated than this one. Next I’ll be doing biota studies on deserted chunks of ocean rock.”

“And I have no doubt you’d discover something interesting there.”

“Probably about myself and my interest in small, out-of-the-way places.”

“Travel isn’t such a strange impulse. And Iceland, there you’ll have the hot springs and geysers. When I was there it was beautiful.”

“Vicente, where haven’t you been?”

“Your homeland, in fact. The U.S. of A.”

She couldn’t tell if there was a suggestion in this.

“Well, Surtsey’s a very long shot,” she said. “You know I don’t exactly have the best publication record.”

“You are dedicated to your work, and that is what counts. I’ll write them. I’ll tell them how I’ve seen you now, for months, in the lab all the time. No personal life whatsoever. No boyfriends, no crazy nightlife. They’ll appreciate that detail.”

“I’m sure.”

“Just short evening naps on the cliffs, which help you to find fossils.”

“All in the name of research.”

“A true devoted and passionate scientist.” He leaned back on his hands. “But doesn’t it bother you?”

“What?”

“No personal life. We’re all human, even devoted scientists.”

“Of course,” she said. “But by ‘personal life’ I think you actually mean ‘romantic life.’ The two aren’t the same. Come on. I have friends here, I have a community. I’m sitting here having a drink with you. What would you call that?”

“I don’t know. What would
you
call it?”

“A full life.”

“You know what I am asking.”

“You’re asking why I don’t have a boyfriend? Or why I don’t want one?”

“A fair question.”

“So you want to know why I’m not dating Ramon?”

“See? You merely dance around the subject.”

“Oh, Vicente. What do you want me to say? You know I was married, for eight years, and you know Thomas died. And God, you must know that in some way that makes it a little difficult to think about getting into something new.”

“I do know these things, Greer. But you never speak of them.”

Why not tell him the truth? He was, after all, a good man, a good friend. She wanted to explain about Thomas, about everything that had happened with her dissertation, about their life in Massachusetts, what he’d done with his pollen data, how she’d so misplaced her love.

Vicente was trying to read her expression. “You’re perhaps still in love with him?”

“No,” said Greer. “Then, at least, I could grieve like a normal person. I don’t actually think I even knew my husband.”

Vicente raised his eyebrows. Perhaps this was how he’d explained to himself her refusals: She was still in love with her husband. “It is complicated, I imagine,” he said. “A marriage, the ways in which two people come to spend their lives together, then watch those lives drift apart. I’ve never been married. I’ve never been close to marriage. I have dated many women, but it’s always been fun. And when it doesn’t work out, it’s okay too. I can’t pretend to understand what it must feel like to take a relationship so seriously, and to lose it.”

“Years ago,” she said, “after Thomas and I were just married, when I was a graduate student, he took my dissertation and used it for his own paper. He stole my equation.”

Vicente looked confused. “This was his data fraud?”

“No. This was years before. My husband appropriated my work, and then
I
was accused of plagiarism.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” said Greer. “I did absolutely nothing. I refused to believe it had happened.”

Vicente took a deep breath. “Who would imagine such a thing could happen? It’s awful. But, Greer, not all men are like that. Very few would ever do such a thing.”

“I know. He was an exceptional and rare find.”

“It angers you.”

“It did. But not so much now.”

“Is this why you keep to yourself? Alone with your work?”

“Who knows.”

“I suppose nothing is that simple.”

The sun was low in the sky, bathing the harbor in an orange light. Five fishing boats had already come in, tied to the docks. In the distance three more were making their way home. Amid them, floating toward the shore, was a green glass globe.

“Ah, look!” said Vicente, springing from the wall. “Come.”

He grabbed her hand and led her toward the water; he heeled his shoes off, rolled up his pants. “I’ll be right back.” He waded out to where the glass orb rose and fell with the waves. “It is perfect!” He lifted it, dripping, above his head. Seawater trickled down his face and he smiled. “A good omen, Greer! A very good omen!”

He waded back, the green globe held before him like a crystal ball.

“A buoy! Once, maybe twice a year, they wash ashore. They are considered good luck.”

Greer thought of all the buoys hanging from Mahina’s ceiling, of the luck her friend deserved.

When he reached the sand, Vicente handed it to Greer. “For your luck. For Iceland. For the future.”

Back on the wall, Vicente rolled down his pants, and Greer examined the globe in her lap, imagining what it would have been like to live there hundreds of years before, to watch the sea for gifts, for visitors, for life. From Terevaka, the island would seem the world’s center. Greer took a sip of her pisco sour, letting it roll slowly down her throat.

“You look nice,” said Vicente. “Yes, you look very very nice.” And Greer was suddenly conscious that she had, for the first time, done her hair up in barrettes. She’d put on a sleeveless dress, the one flattering item in her duffels.

“My field clothes demanded retirement.”

“Yes, of course.” He tapped the buoy. “Do you like your present?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Some men give little tiny stones. I give large pieces of glass.”

Greer laughed. “Originality is always better.”

“And my idea about von Spee? You think it’s good?”

“I do.”

“He was a great commander, a man of strong passion.” Vicente looked out to the sea. “He was caught in a war where old friends became his enemies, where the lives of thousands of men were in his hands.”

“Vicente, you speak just like a man in love.”

“It is a new thing for me, this emotion.”

But perhaps it was a fleeting passion, perhaps his love for von Spee would pass, perhaps all Vicente’s loves would pass. How could one know for sure?

Greer let her hands rest on the glass ball—her gift, her good luck.

A week later, Greer began to stack all her pollen guides and data books in their crates. She sent the seed collection back to Kew Gardens and arranged for her plant samples from the island to be held in the SAAS building for future investigators. She packed her buoy in a crate of its own, carefully padded, hoping it would make its way safely across the ocean with her. The last item left on the long worktable was her paper. Fifty pages of data and analysis, the product of eight months of work. The nut fossil had, in the end, made it all possible. And now she had a real grant; it had come through. She’d be part of an official expedition to Surtsey.

She was wiping down the centrifuge, when she heard a knock at the door. She turned and saw Luka Tepano. Stubble, thin and silvery, matted his face, lending his cheeks the odd shimmer of fish scales. His eyes were fixed on a roll of paper in his hand.

“Luka! I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t know where to find you. Please come in.” Since the night he’d been at Mahina’s, Greer had been trying to locate him. She’d gone to the
caleta
, to the leper colony, even to the site of the old woman’s cave, but he seemed to have disappeared.

She dragged one of the lab stools out and offered it to him. He sat down slowly.

“Luka, I wanted to thank you. I didn’t get a chance the other night. Thank you for finding me and fetching Vicente. I might have died otherwise.”

His eyes searched the lab—the empty shelves, the stack of crates, the half-dismantled centrifuge.

“Soy de los Estados Unidos,”
said Greer. “I’ve been studying the island’s plants.”

On the table before them was a photographic book,
Flora and Fauna of the Tropics
. He looked at the cover, and then to Greer. She nodded. He leafed through several pages, examining the plant images.

“Do you understand English? Some English?”

He lifted the rolled paper from his lap and set it on the table in front of her.

“What’s this?”

She unrolled the thick paper and flattened it. The face of a young boy stared back at her. His eyes were large, his mouth full and smiling. His neck was narrow, almost too small for the fullness of the face. Greer looked up at Luka. “This is you.”

And then, for the first time, she was sure he understood: He nodded.

“When you were little.”

She saw in his weathered face that ghost of youth. She could see the boy, the worried eyes, the plump nose, the bright grin. The picture must have been at least sixty years old.

Greer rolled it carefully and handed it to him. “What a precious thing to have,” she said.

He took the paper from her, and simply sat there like he was waiting for something.

“Do you sign?” she asked, raising both hands in what seemed to her the natural gesture for a question. “Or write?” She tore a page from her notebook and slid it toward him with a pen, but he made no move to pick it up. Then she went over to her sample box, and removed the fossil and held it out. “This. Do you know what this is? When you found me I had it in my hand.”

Luka seemed reticent to take the fossil from her, but when she set it on the table, he lifted it to his eye and examined it with great delight.

“It’s turned out to be the most important thing I found here.”

He watched her speak with such concentration, Greer thought for a moment he might be reading her lips. He smiled.

“It’s a seed from a very big tree. A fossilized seed.”

He was still for a moment, then slid off his stool and offered her the nut as though it were a present, then took it back and repeated the motion.

“A gift?” asked Greer. “
You
gave it to me?”

He shook his head, then once more offered the fossil to her.

“A gift from your
someone else
?” she asked. “Did your
amiga
give this to me?”

He held the paper to his chest, nodded, and reached for her hand.