The Dutch Wife (14 page)

Thomas recognized the Rowland Vanderlinden he’d seen in the old photograph. His short beard and longish hair were grey now, but his thin face, though the lines were deeper, hadn’t really changed that much. His eyes were blue and over-bright, perhaps with fever. He wore a white shirt and pants and sandals. The cat was rubbing itself against his legs, looking the visitors over with eyes that were also of an un-cat-like blue.

Rowland Vanderlinden held out his hand first to Macphee. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. He had quite a deep voice, but it quavered a little. His face was slightly pock-marked and some of his front teeth were black.

“You too,” said Macphee. He introduced Thomas. “This is the man who’s come all this way to find you.”

“So,” said Rowland, holding out his hand, “you’re Rachel’s son.” His eyes narrowed, as though he was trying to find her in Thomas. His hand was dry and cool. “How is your mother?” He asked this in a very quiet voice, as though the matter was strictly between the two of them.

“She’s fine,” said Thomas.

“That’s good,” said Rowland. “You can tell me all about her later.” He then gestured towards the older of the two women, who were still sitting. “This is my Consort,” he said, empasizing that odd word. She was a heavily built islander dressed in a plain green wrap. Her eyes had pouches under them and her long black hair was streaked with grey. “And this is our daughter,” he said, nodding towards the younger woman, who was heavy like her mother, with glossy black hair. She wore a blue wrap adorned with flowers. Rowland said something to them in their own language.

The women’s eyes gleamed for a moment as they inspected Thomas.

He noted that each of them wore a white orchid over the left ear, and how, just between their breasts, the fringe of a tattoo—the petals of a red flower—protruded from their wraps. But he was mainly interested in Rowland, thinking how incredible it was that this man, whom he’d never heard of till a few weeks ago, had once been his mother’s husband. He tried, in vain, to imagine them together all those years ago.

The black cat now jumped lightly up from the floor onto Rowland’s shoulders. It stretched forward, peering with those deep blue eyes into Thomas’s face for a long moment, assessing him. Rowland stayed still while it made its inspection. The two women watched till the cat suddenly lost interest and jumped down once more onto the floor. Rowland made some comment and the women nodded their heads. He turned to Thomas. “Cats are taken very seriously here,” he said. “You seem to have passed the test.”

On the floor, the cat began to gnaw at its belly looking for some flea or parasite.

THOMAS VANDERLINDEN AND MACPHEE
were still standing awkwardly on the verandah. Now the Consort and her daughter got out of their chairs. Rowland handed the book he’d been reading to the Consort. The two women walked slowly to the slatted door and went into the house. The dogs and the blue-eyed black cat trotted after them.

“The women will cook something,” Rowland said. “You must both be hungry.”

Thomas said he’d been feeling a little nauseated all day.

“Ah yes, nausea,” said Rowland. “It’s endemic here. In time, we get so used to it we don’t notice.”

Macphee nodded and lit a cigarette.

“I hope,” Rowland said to Thomas, “you don’t think it was impolite of me not to introduce my Consort or my daughter by their names.”

Thomas had noticed that.

“Up here in the Highlands,” said Rowland, “they reveal their names only to someone they’ve known a long time. They’re always afraid a stranger might use it in various spells and curses.”

Thomas expected him to make some joke about that, but he didn’t.

“Now, to matters of more immediate interest,” said Rowland. “I’ll show you to your rooms. You can wash up, then we’ll have a drink before dinner.” He led Thomas and Macphee round the corner of the verandah to the back of the house, where there were several slatted doors in a row. He opened the first of them for Thomas. “I hope you find this comfortable enough,” he said.

It was a very small room with a bed and mosquito netting, a table with a chipped basin and big jug of water. A rusted mirror hung over a small chest of drawers with a white towel lying on top. A green robe hung from a hook on the wall with a pair of sandals on a cane chair underneath.

“You can take off your damp things and hang them up to dry,” Rowland said. “The robe will be more comfortable.” Then he took Macphee to a room farther along.

Thomas stripped and washed himself carefully, sponging away the rot that had attached itself to him on the journey. He put on the green robe and the sandals and did indeed feel better.

MACPHEE, ALSO IN ROBE AND SANDALS,
was already sitting with Rowland on the verandah when Thomas joined them. It was getting dark and a lantern hung from a pole. The girl plodded in with a tray of glasses and a carafe of a yellowish liquid and placed them on a little table. Thomas was aware of her hooded, dark eyes lingering on him for a moment, then she went back into the house.

Rowland poured three glasses of the liquid. “It’s gin in a mix of fruit juices,” he said.

Thomas put it to his lips and sipped. It was very refreshing and he drank deeply.

The girl came in again, this time with a small plate. On it was a fish about the size of a minnow, with a red speckled belly. It seemed a very tiny fish to share among three people.

“A
paru!
” Macphee said. “I haven’t seen one for years.”

“We don’t often have one,” Rowland said. “The local Shaman heard I was having visitors today and sent this one as a gift.”

“Is it all right if I go first?” said Macphee. He picked up the fish by the tail, licked its belly twice and put it back on the plate. “Lovely,” he said.

Rowland held the plate out to Thomas.

“No thanks,” Thomas said.

Macphee shook his head. “Oh, the ignorance of strangers!” he said. “If you said no to a
paru
in some places up here, it would be regarded as such bad manners they’d feel obliged to cut your head—or something—off.”

“We don’t exact such severe penalties here,” Rowland said, smiling.

Thomas was a little embarrassed. “Did I make a blunder?” he said.

“You could call it that,” said Rowland. “You see, this house is in the territory of the Tarapa people. Tarapa actually means fish-lickers. This little fish is quite rare and can be found only in the high mountain streams. The speckled part of the belly has a narcotic effect. The Tarapa spend weeks fishing for them and sometimes don’t catch any at all. When I first came up here, I quickly discovered it would be impossible to understand the Tarapa fully without sampling the
paru
.” He picked the fish up and licked its belly twice. “If nothing else,” he said, “for some reason it’s very good for hangovers.”

“I can bear witness to that,” said Macphee.

Thomas was already feeling a little giddy from the alcohol on an empty stomach. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll at least give it a try.” He took the
paru
by the tail and touched it with the tip of his tongue. It had a rough texture and the slightest flavour of liquorice. He licked it again more vigorously, twice.

After that, the
paru
was passed around and licked several times till the flavour was almost gone.

The girl came in again, put down another jug of gin and left. Rowland filled the glasses.

This time, when Thomas picked up his glass, he took particular note of the beads of sweat on his hand. He also became acutely aware of the rain pounding on the tin roof.

Its intricate rhythms were like a drumbeat meant especially for him. He tried to figure out its message, pausing with his glass halfway to his lips.

As he held his glass there, a mosquito landed on his wrist. It sucked his blood, all the while watching him with multiple eyes as big as lumps of coral. He was aware, as he never had been, that it was a living being, a creature of flesh and blood, one of a kind, like himself. He allowed it to drink its fill and fly heavily away.

Now a terrifying thing happened. On the floor near his feet, a long-snouted black rodent, bigger than any dog he’d ever seen, was slithering towards him, its glistening eyes concentrated on him. He tried to jump out of his chair and get away from it, but he was stuck as if in some invisible quicksand. He tried to shout out but could only make a grunt.

He heard the voice of Rowland, deep, echoing, from a thousand miles away.

“It’s all right. It’s just a little
arat,
” he said. “It’s quite harmless. It helps keep the vermin down.” The huge creature passed Thomas by. It began nibbling at Macphee, its horrifying fangs flashing in the lantern light. “It’s looking for lice,” Rowland’s distant voice boomed. “The main thing is not to move, or it’ll bite.”

Now the
arat
came back towards Thomas. He felt the brush of its whiskers. He braced himself for the pain but felt only a tickling sensation as it browsed at his ankles. He giggled and the creature began to shrink. Then it scuttled away, suddenly a small black animal, out into the rain.

Thomas would have told his companions what he’d just seen but his mouth wouldn’t work. He was aware they were talking though he couldn’t concentrate on the totality of what they were saying: each individual word seemed so loaded with implication, he became bogged down. After a while, however, he was able once again to follow their conversation and the words no longer seemed so significant. They talked about an old chief they’d both known who had died; about the pros and cons of a plan for widening the passage through the reef; about the need for employment for the young islanders; about the inevitable decay of the traditional ways.

Neither Rowland nor Macphee seemed to have noticed anything odd in Thomas’s behaviour, and he was glad of that.

The young woman came out and said something to Rowland.

“Time for dinner,” he said.

They all went into the house. The walls and floor of the inner hallway were adorned with a variety of conch shells and with grotesquely shaped pieces of wood. Some of them looked quite surreal: cats with antlers, dogs with swordfish jaws, birds with human faces and tragic eyes. They followed Rowland through an open doorway into a dining room, lit by a hurricane lamp. Most of the room was taken up by a table made of a dark wood, with three place settings. Masks painted in lurid colours adorned the walls; but there were also three bookcases full of books, each bound in the same brown cover, like the one he’d seen Rowland reading on the verandah.

From his seat, Thomas reached over and selected one of the books and flicked through it. The pages were quite mildewed but were entirely filled with a spidery, energetic handwriting that seemed quite recent.

“My notebooks,” Rowland said. “I’m an inveterate note-taker.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Thomas, putting it back.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Rowland, smiling. “This evening will eventually appear in my notes.”

“That won’t make for exciting reading,” said Macphee.

Rowland laughed. “Perhaps not,” he said. “But living up here, I’ve seen things most anthropologists only dream of. I hope to publish my notes eventually. One of the major problems in my business is that when the researcher dies, his work dies with him.”

The girl came in carrying a wooden platter on which were pieces of cooked meat and vegetables. She placed it before Rowland and left.

“Roast turkey,” he said.

The meat smelled wonderful. Thomas filled his plate and, after the first bite, knew he’d never again taste anything so delicious. The room was quiet, with only the sound of eating and occasional comments on the food from Macphee or Rowland.

When they finished the meat and vegetables, the girl brought in a dish of some kind of plantain for dessert. Rowland warned Thomas he might find it a little hot. The first bite seemed, in fact, sickly sweet. Then, suddenly, his mouth was on fire. Rowland and Macphee laughed as he downed a whole glass of gin in an attempt to douse the flame.

– 9 –

THEY WENT BACK OUT
onto the verandah. The night was black, the rain was heavy, and there was even a slight chill in the air.

“In the Highlands, we have cool nights for a month at this time of year,” Rowland said. He gave his visitors blankets that looked as though they were made of rabbit fur to drape around themselves.

Thomas felt he’d been too quiet for too long. “When I was on the schooner from Hawaii,” he said to Rowland, “I met some people who knew you. Berkley was their name.”

Rowland nodded, but it was Macphee who spoke. “What a pair!” he said. “They can’t wait to change these islanders into carbon copies of themselves. Can you imagine a worse fate?”

“I’m afraid it’ll happen soon enough,” said Rowland. “The Berkleys are like most of the foreigners who come to these places. They think they have nothing to learn. Because the people can’t read, they regard them as illiterates. As though it wasn’t the illiterates who invented the Bible—and all literature for that matter. Of course, the Berkleys regard people like me as heathen lovers, in more than one sense.” His black teeth glinted in the light of the hurricane lamp.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to send the Berkleys to the Lumbas for a while?” said Macphee. “That would straighten them out.” He laughed and lit his cigarette.

Rowland explained to Thomas: “The Lumba people live on some islands a thousand miles south of here. They’re notorious for trepanning. They drill a little hole in the skull right over the frontal lobe. They believe it releases the noxious gases that make some people unpleasant.”

Thomas was trying to absorb that when Macphee spoke again. “On the subject of noxious gases, we ran into the Hupu on the way up. We had to sleep in the hut by the Stink Tree.”

“Ah, the Hupu,” said Rowland. “They’re quite something.”

“Tell Thomas about the marriage bells,” Macphee said to Rowland, who obviously didn’t need much encouragement to keep talking about these matters.

“That’s a custom peculiar only to the Hupu so far as I know,” said Rowland. “All newly wed warriors, for the first six months of their marriage, have to wear little bells attached to the scrotum. When a man approaches his wife for intercourse, the sound of the bell is believed to have the power to chase evil spirits away. And when they’re in the act, the bell’s tinkling sound is supposed to please the fertility gods so much, they’ll visit the couple with a child.” He laughed. “But one old Shaman told me the real reason for the bells is very practical. At night, it reassures the girl’s parents that the husband’s doing his duty. And on the other hand, the jingling’s a deterrent to infidelity.”