The Dutch Wife (16 page)

As soon as they entered the outer fringe of bush, the screaming stopped. Then the jungle birds, which had been silent, began to make their sounds. They were tentative at first, as though after a storm, then confident, then so raucous all human cries would have been obliterated.

– 13 –

AFTER THE RELATIVE COOL
of the Highlands, the journey back down to where the two canoes were waiting seemed to Thomas like a slow immersion in a sauna—a sauna into which a million biting insects had been released with no desire for any food except human flesh and blood. Rowland worried about the notebooks in his bag—he refused to wade through deep water in case he might ruin them. “I’ve lost all my notebooks once before,” he said. “I don’t want that ever to happen again.” He seemed impervious to the insects, however, and didn’t slow their descent in any other way.

He even saved them time by taking a route that skirted round Hupu territory. “They’d expect me to stay with them for a while,” he said. “They’ve no conception of what it means to be in a hurry.”

The canoes and the four paddlers were ready at the appointed spot. They spent the night there before the final part of the journey down to the coast.

BEFORE LEAVING ON THAT LAST MORNING,
they ate some bread Rowland had brought, toasted over the campfire.

Macphee had already breakfasted on gin, and that loosened his tongue. “I forgot to mention to you, Rowland,” he said, “Thomas thought he had some visitors in his room at your place. Why don’t you tell him about it, Thomas?”

Thomas was reluctant, but described the visitation briefly. “Maybe it was only a dream,” he said when he’d finished. “But I don’t usually remember my dreams, and this one seemed so real. Maybe it was the fish-licking brought it on.”

“I warned him to lock his door,” said Macphee.

“You can’t lock your door against dreams,” said Rowland. “And if it was a dream, Thomas, it was very curious. Among the Tarapa women, there’s a cult called the Cult of the Scorpion, and it so happens that their major fertility symbol is a scorpion with its stinger raised.”

“Are your Consort and your daughter members of the cult?” Macphee asked.

Thomas was uncomfortable with such bluntness, but Rowland seemed quite happy to answer. “They might well be,” he said. “They have the scorpion tattoo, but so do many other women who aren’t in the cult. As I told you, the Tarapa love their secrets. So even if my family are members, they certainly wouldn’t tell me. But, you know, Thomas, among the Highland tribes, when sex is involved in a ritual, it’s usually for a benevolent purpose. A kind of a blessing. It could have been anyone—if your door wasn’t locked, visitors could have come in and taken advantage of you!” He laughed at that. “Anyway, no real harm was done, was it? The whole thing sounds quite enjoyable, aside from the scorpion part.” He seemed amused by the entire matter.

Macphee blew a smoke ring towards Thomas. “Well, that depends,” he said. “If anyone dropped a scorpion on me during sex, I’d lose all interest. How about you, Thomas?”

Thomas just shrugged.

“If I remember rightly,” Macphee said to Rowland, “two government officials were tied up and scorpions let loose on them by some tribe up in the Highlands years ago. Isn’t that so?”

“All I can say is I’ve lived there for twenty years,” said Rowland, “and no one’s ever tried to terrorize me.”

“As if you’d even notice,” said Macphee. He turned to Thomas. “What’s terrifying to most people is fascinating to Rowland.” He was a little drunk, but he meant this as a compliment. And Rowland took it as such.

– 14 –

THE JOURNEY TO THE COAST
was uneventful. They got back to the Equator Hotel in the late afternoon and stayed overnight. The next morning, Macphee and Rowland and Thomas went down to the beach where the big outrigger canoe for Vatua lay alongside a jetty. Macphee would be remaining on Manu a while longer. He’d been retained by Lloyd’s to make inquiries about a freighter that had run onto a reef a few miles to the north and sunk, all hands lost.

At the jetty, he shook hands with Thomas. The familiar smell of alcohol and tobacco that emanated from him now made Thomas a little sentimental, but he confined himself to formalities. “Thank you for all your help,” he said.

Macphee, accustomed to a life of transient friendships, was matter-of-fact. “It’s my job,” he said. “But if you’re ever down this way again, look me up and we’ll have a drink.” He said this as though he actually believed it was possible Thomas might come back in the foreseeable future. Perhaps that was his way of dealing with these final partings.

Macphee then shook Rowland’s hand. “Radio me the date of your return and I’ll meet you here,” he said.

Thomas and Rowland walked along the jetty and climbed into the big outrigger canoe. A dozen islanders were already aboard, and it was clear from their anxious whisperings and the way they looked at Rowland that they wished he were not coming with them.

The outrigger cast off before a brisk offshore breeze and skimmed quickly towards the gap in the reef. As it surfed through and out into the swells of the ocean, Thomas looked back to the shore. Through the palm trees, he caught a glimpse of Macphee walking along the path in the direction of the Equator Hotel, no doubt looking forward to a liquid lunch.

But Macphee was soon gone from his mind. The wind was strong, the sky was gloomy, the canoe was tossed about in the menacing waves. The crew and the passengers—even the children—looked fearfully towards Rowland, who sat with a strained smile on his face.

After a while, Thomas couldn’t stand it. “What’s wrong with them?” he said.

“They know I’m from the Highlands,” Rowland said. “They blame me for the rough weather.” He reassured Thomas: “Don’t worry about it. We’re safe. They’re afraid it might bring them even worse luck if they threw me overboard.”

THEY ARRIVED AT VATUA
in time for the schooner. It wasn’t the
Innisfree,
as they’d hoped. Rowland had looked forward to renewing his acquaintance with Captain Bonney, but he hadn’t yet returned from a voyage south.

Nor was the trip a pleasant one. This Captain was an aloof Englishman who had nothing to do with the passengers, of whom there were only two: Thomas and Rowland. In addition, the ship was slowed at first by adverse winds, and then it was becalmed in the doldrums—nothing but oily seas, creaking timbers and boredom. Both passengers tried to keep themselves busy. Thomas read and Rowland wrote for hours each day in his notebook. Sometimes he’d read those other bound notebooks he’d brought in his duffle bag—the ones he intended to show to the publisher. As he read them, he’d frown, smile, sigh, purse his lips or roll his eyes. “It’s like living my experiences over again,” he said when he saw Thomas watching. “But without most of the bodily discomforts.”

THEY WERE BOTH DELIGHTED
when, in due course, they docked at Honolulu. During the one-day stopover, Thomas cabled Jeggard to inform him of their progress. Then they caught the steamship for Vancouver, looking forward, at last, to a restful trip.

But this voyage too was disappointing: the ship experienced the worst kind of Pacific winter weather—high winds and huge seas. Wet tablecloths had to be used in the dining rooms to stop the plates from sliding off the tables during meals. Most of the passengers—and even some of the crew—were seasick. No one was unhappy when the ship reached the sheltered waters of the Gulf Islands and docked at Vancouver on a chilly December morning. Thomas bought winter clothing for each of them, and the next day they caught the train for the journey eastward.

– 15 –

DURING THAT FIVE-DAY JOURNEY,
as the train wormed its way ever deeper into the continent, Rowland Vanderlinden marvelled at the beauty—in spite of the now frequent snow—of the Canadian landscape that slid past the window of the double-bunked compartment.

“Why did you leave, if you like it so much?” said Thomas.

“That’s one of the great paradoxes for the traveller,” Rowland said. “If you leave, you wish you’d stayed; if you stay, you wish you’d left.”

Thomas didn’t dispute this. During their long ocean voyages they’d got along very well together. Rowland had worked daily on his notebooks but had often encouraged Thomas to tell him about his study of obscure matters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He’d been the ideal, inquisitive listener.

Now, during these five days, Rowland began to talk more and more about himself in the years before he finally settled in Manu. Thomas suspected he was rehearsing what he intended to tell Rachel about his life since they had parted so long ago.

Once or twice, he hinted grimly at something quite devastating he’d gone through at one point.

Thomas pressed him to talk about that, too, but Rowland seemed genuinely distressed. He said not yet, that he was afraid talking about it would cause him to relive it. “A little later, perhaps,” he said.

Otherwise, he seemed to enjoy telling Thomas about “the early days,” as he called them. Often, the view from the window reminded him of some incident. For example, on a morning when the train was traversing a mountain pass through the Rockies, dwarfed by the granite walls, he turned to Thomas, his eyes milky blue as though he were remembering a dream. “These mountains,” he said, “are just like the approaches to the Hai’ia Mashina Range. It stretches for six hundred miles south of the Great Plain of Tibet. When I left Canada for the last time, I managed to get a berth on a freighter bound for Calcutta. I wasn’t really sure where I was going from there. The only other passengers on the ship were some mountain climbers who were headed for the Hai’ia Mashina range. They said I was welcome to join them. I wasn’t a climber but, like many anthropologists at that time, I did have a great interest in comparative religions. I knew that no outsider had ever visited the great monastery of Masalketse, which was renowned for its esoteric practices. It just happened to be in the Mashina Range, in one of the most forbidding landscapes in the world.”

Thomas, as he did throughout the rail journey, settled in the corner of the compartment and listened, half looking out at those granite heights, wondering why Rowland always seemed drawn to places most people avoided.

ROWLAND ACCOMPANIED THE EXPEDITION
till it trekked near the monastery, which looked like a huge, dark fortress on a snowy plateau. He wished good luck to his climbing friends and he himself went to the monastery gate.

The Porter, who spoke broken English, was not very welcoming but agreed to consult the Abbot. When he returned to the gate, he told Rowland that the monks were just about to begin the Spring fast, which lasted one lunar month. If Rowland would join the fast and successfully endure it, the Abbot would regard this as a sign that he be allowed to stay on for a time and observe their singular monastic practices.

Rowland agreed to give it a try. He’d been in many rough situations in his work and hoped he’d be able to cope. He was assigned a stone cell with a blanket and no heating, in the subzero temperatures. The only food permitted was goat’s milk once a day.

He got through the first night with some difficulty, for it was very cold. The second day was tougher. His cheeks were so cold that the saliva in his mouth was turning to ice. All the hairs in his nose became little stalactites. He eyes felt like ice cubes—they clicked when they moved. On the third day, after drinking the goat’s milk, he became violently sick and overnight he developed a fever. Whether because of the fever or the cold, his teeth chattered so hard together that three of his incisors splintered.

The Abbot, a wizened little man with bright eyes, came to see him in his cell. With the help of the Porter, he congratulated Rowland on having achieved so quickly a near-death condition—a rare privilege, and just the thing, apparently, for entering a state of deep meditation.

At least, that was what it sounded like to Rowland, who in any case had had enough of his monastic experience. He managed to make the Abbot understand that he really didn’t want that enviable near-death state. He’d rather have a full belly and a warm fire, thank you.

Accordingly, bread and roast lamb were brought and a brazier of red-hot coals was placed in the cell. Because of his broken teeth, he had an awful job eating. But after two days of recuperation, he was well enough to be escorted to a nearby village. Feeling a little embarrassed, he wanted to send his apologies to the Abbot for being so frivolous and weak-willed. But according to the Porter, the Abbot had told the monks that Rowland was actually a divine messenger: “This stranger,” he’d said, “was sent to teach us that enlightenment is not possible in each incarnation. Learn from him.”

ROWLAND, ON THE EASTWARD TRAIN,
smiled at Thomas. “At least, those may have been the Abbot’s words,” he said. “The Porter’s English wasn’t that good. I fear it’s often been the case in anthropology that what we took to be gems of traditional wisdom turned out to be simple mistranslations. The great lesson I learned in the monastery—which of course I ought to have already known—is just how easy it is to idealize another culture from a distance. Once you’re a participant, it’s quite a different matter.”

The train rumbled through a long tunnel and the compartment lights flickered. When it re-emerged, Rowland lifted his upper lip and showed Thomas his three black teeth. “See?” he said. “They’re my permanent souvenirs of that time in the monastery. Years later an Abyssinian dentist made them out of black ivory to replace the incisors. But that’s another story.”

TWELVE HOURS LATER,
as the train was descending into the foothills of the Rockies, the terrain reminded Rowland of another of his earlier experiences. “The landscape was just like this,” he told Thomas. “The Maharajah of Bakhstan’s Summer Palace was built among the foothills. I worked there for a very short time—at the library. The previous librarian had died suddenly. Shall I tell you about that? It has a certain interest, if I may say so.”

“Please do,” said Thomas.

THE LIBRARY ITSELF WAS QUITE PALATIAL
and was renowned for its collection of ancient manuscripts. As was quite common in old libraries, some of the parchments that dealt with occult matters had been treated with an acidic residue that could corrode unprotected skin and blind naked eyes. So Rowland had to wear glasses and gloves whenever he handled them.