The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (4 page)

I asked Miltón why they gathered together like that, on certain spots on the bank. He shrugged, and looked, I thought, quite comical. He said that they go where an animal has pissed, or a man has pissed. At least I think this is what he said. Then he rolled out his tongue, as though to lick.

And now I do not know what I wanted to say about butterflies. I have been laughing all day, but it makes me sad. I recall the salon of the Princess Mathilde, the richest room I was ever in. And yes, women like myself, newly arrived in town, all clustered and fluttering, when a rich man speaks. And when he leaves the room, a general business with fans, as we settle on his words and eat.

‘At least they do not fight,’ I say.

‘Which?’

‘The butterflies. At least they are beautiful, and they do not fight.’

‘Enough piss, for everyone,’ he says.

The silence, again, is deafening. The baby flutters inside me, and settles. Doctor Stewart’s red hair is fading to sand in the sun. He has switched from cane alcohol to a more respectable rum.

*

Today, from the swamp, a new crawling thing. Señor López leapt away from the mattress and swore.
Vinchucas
. Like cockroaches. Evil-smelling. I pull up my nightdress in fright and find more bites. Hundreds of bites. They like white
meat
, he says, and then he chews on me himself. Also my blood is richer now. Every crawling, flying thing can smell my belly from miles around. They fly in under my skirts and eat. Francine is set to get them out before I put my bloomers on, and gets comically, horribly, buried in the layers of cloth. My dear friend shouts as he watches, and slaps his leg. It is the thing that he enjoys most, in the day.

I have ordered Miltón for my own use, to keep the mosquitoes from inside my shanty pavilion in the bow. Also
jejenes
, which are tiny, infernal things. Their bite does not last unless scratched, but is the most exquisite torture for the first while. Miltón’s legs are covered with faded welts, but I have never seen him scratch, except in an idle way. They don’t seem to bother him. My very fingernails itch. I want to jump into the river until the water closes over my head. But there are things in the water too (not to mention the English animals on deck) that stop me, the flesh-eating
pirhana
fish, which makes for a great splashing and shouting when the sailors take to the river, and worse – the
rana
, with a barb, Señor López tells me,
so
long, the wound astonishingly painful and slow to heal.

Still becalmed.

I get Miltón to name the birds for me. He does it in his own language first, a guttural mess that makes me think of Gaelic, and then, after some thought, in Spanish. The
Membei
: a tiny blue-winged parrot. The
Mainumby
(in Spanish
El Picaflor
): a tiny whirring gem of a bird, with iridescent feathers. The
Tuca
: a strong, clever bird, the one I saw was carrying a huge banana, lengthways, in its beak. A handsome vulture, or perhaps a falcon, with no Spanish name at all, the
Karakara
. Why? It goes karakarakarakara and then rrrrrrrrrrrp!

We have assembled quite a list, when I spot two birds of my own, of a particular feather: Francine strolling on
deck
and chatting quite amiably to our own Mr Whytehead. Francine all in green like a little parakeet – the engineer in his frock coat and stovepipe hat; quite the magpie (or gull!).

My hands are swollen. I cannot wear a ring that Señor López bought me in Madrid and all day I am itching with the thought that I have somehow let it slip overboard, or even that I threw it over the side. I almost remember doing it; the tiny splash. I send Francine to check my travelling jewellery case and it is there, safe, as I know it must be, but still I see it dropping through the water to the amazement of the fishes. I see it tilt and sink into the grey sludge of the river bottom. I think I may have done it in my sleep, that I may have wandered at night and, against my own knowing, lost the ring overboard.

This afternoon, I call Francine inside. I have her unpack all my trunks and take pen and paper. There is to be no more rummaging when we get to Asunción. She must know which gloves-boots-parasol, and have them close to hand. I am worn out with describing and so have settled on a method, which is to give each toilette a title, such as:

The Diana: a hunting costume of ribbed velvet in two shades of copper, tablier of dull gold plush, kidskin gilet to match, bonnet of fancy straw with bunch of autumn leaves and berries, though I think all of it too heavy to wear here in this heat, and suspect I have brought all the wrong things. It is sometimes cool, though, in the morning, when there is a mist.

The
Chère Amie
: a visiting toilette, in lilac
barège
with three deep flounces bordered with quilled ribbon in blue, gloves of grey with the same ribbon at the wrist, elastic-sided grey satin boots: society may be limited, but Señor López has two sisters and a mother living, to whom, at least, respects must be paid. He says they look like him. I cannot imagine it.

The
Impératrice
: a ballgown in the style of Eugénie, underskirt of rose-coloured satin, looped overskirt in chameleon silk, being raspberry shot with blue. Gloves, boots,
sortie de bal
, in blue, though I think perhaps white would do. This to be worn with opals, for lesser occasions, or my sapphires, if Señor López allows. He threatened to throw them in the sea and replace them with diamonds, which he can come by more cheaply over here, though looking at the forest, I can not imagine diamonds in there nor gold – only mushrooms.

While I am at tea, Señor López comes in and throws things around the little cabin. He is followed about by his valet de chambre who flaps his hands and then starts to cry. The man actually cries. A thin little fellow with too much oil in his hair, he leaves the cabin and goes to the rail and almost howls. I think the oil attracts the insects, and suggest to Francine she tell him so. She looks at me, quite boldly, as if to say ‘Me, talk to a valet?’

But something must be done. Señor López is blithered by waistcoats. He goes out in the morning pleased with his reflection, then thinks the men laugh at him and shrugs the damn things off, to wit: a rust-coloured silk jacquard complete with fob and chain, tangled under some maritime divot or pivot or dah-dee-doo. Then he is angry all over again because of course he is very proud of this rust-coloured silk jacquard and it is spoiled, now, so I have Francine rescue it, and smooth it out myself, I say that there is no point in being rich if you do not know what money is. Which makes him laugh. He says that if you know what money is, then you are not rich.

But it is not so simple, and to make it simple I take the sticky valet aside myself and tell him he is to lay out only caramel and blue and leave the flattery to me. Also wash his hair in vinegar. He quivers a little, as we talk.

It occurs to me that Francine would like to be a
wife
. I
have
been puzzling over her since we left France. Sometimes, during the carnage of the Atlantic, she could not cross the cabin to tend to me, except by crawling on the floor and hanging on to the fixed legs of the table and then the bed. I looked at her and wondered what on earth she was doing here. What she might seek across the ocean. What she had left behind.

Perhaps she has dreams. Yes, Francine, I have decided, has
soul
. Of course she is also fond of me, as I am terribly fond of her. And besides, she knows all about me and so I must be kind. The girl learned her tricks at her mother’s knee; she kept secrets and carried billets-doux from the age of five: you would think she had fallen off the stage of the Bouffes, if it were not for her face, which is very simple and staid and enjoys an air of genteel sorrow.

So, behind her she has left a baby, alive or dead. And ahead of her she sees … a husband – a proper one. Such respectability.

She was sent to me by Dolores the Spanish girl, who found her too pretty, but said she was clean and clever and at home in the world. I decided to call her Francine, for my French adventures. Perhaps I should call her something else now; Speranza or Mercedes.

I have her sit by me. I tell her these are the things she must know to be a wife, as taught to me by Miss Miller, the English teacher at Mme Hubert’s school for young girls in Bordeaux; culled from her little book, which she inscribed, as I see on the fly: ‘For Eliza – who would do well in the world.’ (The pages are rotting a little, in the heat.)

She must not! Look steadily at any one, especially if they are a gentleman; not turn her head from side to side during a more general conversation; nor shift in her chair, nor hold on to any part of herself while conversing, such as an ear or an elbow; nor place her hand on any part of the person she is talking to, such as their collar or one of their buttons;
she
is not to cross her legs, nor extend her feet to view her slippers; nor admire herself with complacency in a glass; nor adjust, in any way, her jewels, hair, handkerchief; she must throw her shawl with graceful negligence upon a table and not fret about a hat which she has just left off &c. &c. Neither is she to laugh immoderately or play continually with her fan.

And the reverse, I tell her, if she would be a whore. But the reverse again, which is to say the same, if she would be a
grande horizontale
. We do some preliminary work with a fan, with much hilarity.

I close the book.

The same Miss Miller who, as I left that wretched school, said, ‘You will end up with a disease,’ and slammed the door. Goodbye, Miss Miller.

Francine says that Mr Whytehead is the son of a ship’s chandler, which is to say he is the son of no one at all. And besides, his father is dead. Which fact seems to us to be quite hilarious. I tell her that I do not know what openings there would be in Asunción, but she may do as well to stick by me.

The boat moved. All day it moved! The trees have given way, on our left, to an endless swamp of green and grey. And the thump and slap of the great paddles is thin and distant in its echoless wastes.

Tonight we keep no company. My dear friend tells me ghost stories, where all the ghosts are animals. A thing called the
ow-ow
that looks like a sheep and hunts in a pack. ‘Ow! Ow!’ he says. A water serpent with the head of a dog – also lascivious – and he yelps and pants like a pup.

Francine has painted my bites with camomile, so I flake and itch. It is very close and still. The boat is full of shiftings, small noises, groans. And in my belly, the child does not so much kick as knock. Does not so much knock as scrabble.

Still, if we attempt, say, three ensembles a day, it will pass the time nicely to Paraguay.

*

In a sort of revenge for the jacquard waistcoat, Señor López complains of my tight lacing and Francine is set to cutting side vents in my corsets. She threads the new eyelets with pink and blue ribbon, to please me. But they are ruined. I should not have to dress. I should be confined, and I would stay so, but that Doctor Stewart orders me out, to perspire.

He has not examined me yet. Not once. He is supposed to kneel at my feet and put his hand up my skirts and do things. But he has not. Every time I look at him I think of it, and he thinks of it, and sometimes, in expiation, he says,

‘Still kicking?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Very good.’

My dear friend is impatient. He gargles brandy and spits over the side. They are all impatient, and give me a wide berth. I am unlucky and I am slow. I remind them of too much – of women. Of the act that made me swell. I remind them of hopes that do not come to fruit and lowered voices and things that go wrong in the middle of the night.

When I was sixteen, I think I was beautiful. But that was three years ago. Something has happened to my face now. I cannot say exactly what – but colours that should flatter do not flatter, and everything I do to it is wrong. I am waiting for my hair to fall out, but I cannot remember if this happens before or after the baby is born.

Señor López says I must turn into a slack old Doña in black, with a mouth like a chicken’s arsehole. I must go bald except for my upper lip, and order people, especially
important
people, around. And he must grow cheerful, I say, and round, with a baby pulling at his nose and another wetting his knee. But he is already thinking of something else, and leaves the room.

I will have a parrot in Asunción, like the one the Clarke sisters had in Mallow. A green one that said
Erin Abú! Erin Abú!

But this afternoon: a peculiar advance. Miltón motions to me as I lie in my
hamaca
. He is hunched over a bowl of porridge, and he takes a lump of it and smears it on his britches. I have no idea why he should want me to witness this, but it is certainly done for me. He applies it carefully to the bottom of his drawers; then he approaches, lifts the muslin and tries to assault my person, or, in hindsight, my petticoats, his hands still covered in slop. Señor López comes running at my cry and there is such a ruckus, I am afraid I may lose my new friend to the river. He gabbles ferociously and whines, and suddenly Señor López starts to laugh. He laughs until he has to sit down, which he does, with a thump on the deck, and then he drums his heels on the floor. (I, meanwhile, rearranging my dignity, as best I can.)

Half an hour later, the porridge is dry and his britches stiff as a board. The women of the region use it for starch, and it works wonderfully well. Francine has an order from the cook and by evening my skirts again are five feet wide.

We sit and play cards – for no money still, which is not what I call cards at all. The lugubrious Doctor Stewart and the religious Mr Whytehead, who leans now over the shoulder of the simple maid Francine to point at a three of spades. Señor spits brandy. I sweep and whisper and duck and swish about in my marron
moiré
and make them all sweat beneath their collars, and I do not care. I
commission
Mr Whytehead (who learns his languages from a book) to settle my Spanish into verbs and participles, and I flirt terribly, and,