Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

“Circus lions?”

  “Wild pigs!”

  “What?” Sal said. Vida felt very warm and gratified to see his face, which never went very north or very south of perfect equatorial placidity, as it broke open in true surprise. “How many?” he asked.

  “Twenty, maybe.”

  His smile was so beaming with private light that he looked away from her shyly, as though meeting her eyes with that sort of happy expression was more than either of them could bear.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Well what?”

  “What are we going to do now?”

  He brought his knees up, propped his elbows on them, squinted at the waves. “I don’t know . . . what should we do now?”

  “About the pigs, I mean.”

  “Oh, well—you have what you need, don’t you?”

  The spear that she had spent all morning on was indeed still in her hand. “Well, but . . .” How curious that she had, in the course of the last few hours, stood at the top of a mountain and felt no real fear, and now, talking with Sal, before a gentle sea on a calm day when the wind just nudged meaningless little clouds from here to there, she should have the precise sensation of standing before a cliff.

  It was like leaning out over a great height, not being told what to do—it sent a violent shudder up her spine, and made her feel helpless.

  How baffling, how utterly irritating, how characteristically Sal, that he should continue to be such a difficult person, and never, not once, just do what she expected of him. It was perhaps on account of this whirl of emotion that she spoke without thinking. What came out of her mouth surprised her. “No,” she said, “not all I need.”

  “Oh no?”

  “Well, I mean, let’s just say for instance that I was able to spear a wild pig—just for a joke, let’s say I could do it—then how would I ever get it back here?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  Vida glanced where he was looking—out at the sleek gray back of a dolphin breaking the surface of the ocean. “I’d need help. Jack, I suppose. You’re much too gimpy to be of any use.”

  “Yes,” he said, his mouth bending downward in self-deprecation, “that makes sense.”

  “Even so, we couldn’t carry it all the way back. There’s a reason those hogs are on their side of the mountain. The ridge that separates us from them is high; there’s no easy way around it that I can see.”

  “Is there nothing here that you could use?”

  “Must you talk to me like some child about to take a grammar school test? Of course there is. Rope—we could haul our prey back. And the old tablecloth—we could wrap the thing, suspend it from a pole.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Oh come, you’re not going to send me off on a hunt. Didn’t Fitz specifically tell you to look after me while he was gone? Aren’t I to be protected at all costs from such rough stuff?”

  “I don’t think Fitz knew who you were when he said that.”

  Vida was so surprised that Sal would speak thusly of the dead, not to mention the dead young man he’d served most of his life, that for a moment she could think of no reply.

  “You don’t have to go.”

  “Well, who would you send in my stead?”

  “Jack and Brinkley, I suppose.”

  “But—” Her heart rebelled so furiously at this notion that for a few moments she had no vocabulary at all. The whole mission had been her doing—he couldn’t just give it to somebody else.

  “But?”

  “Well, you see—it’s my spear.”

  Sal grinned and she saw his gleaming, slightly askew teeth. “Then I guess it’ll be you, won’t it?”

  Vida beamed.

  “As the captain of this mission, I have a request.”

  “Anything.”

  Without a wince, Sal was on his feet. “I am pretty much healed, and I want to see what’s on the other side. May I be your second in command?”

  The afternoon had advanced some by the time Vida, with Sal close behind, found the surest path down the escarpment on the far side of the ridge that separated their beach and their jungle from the wide valley on the other side. Vida had wound all the rope that had washed up from the Princess (and was not strictly necessary for keeping their huts standing) around her waist. The pocketknife was tucked into this jerry-rigged belt, all of which made a curious fashion with her water-stained bloomers and undershirt—she could just imagine this getup as an illustration of some half woman, half beast in one of the more sensational newspapers—but all in all she was glad that she looked a little fearsome. She did ask herself, as her tough bare feet searched out solid ground for their descent, what madness had brought her here, to this moment of living. Then she remembered: it was Sal, goading her with his leading questions and smug grin.

  “Sal?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re only pretending to let me be in charge, right?”

  “And what would that gain me?”

  Vida did not get a chance to answer, because just then the herd of pigs came dashing from a thicket of low bushes, their bodies arcing together to make one curved shape through the purplish grass. They were tusked, their hides a mottled brown. They were unlike any pig Vida had ever seen, and for a moment she was all tingly at the wonder of them and forgot what she’d come here to do.

  How had they come to this remote place? How had they lived all this time?

  She wanted to know the answers to all the mysteries of existence, to understand what higher purpose had brought her, or the pigs for that matter, or the waving grasses, or even the tiny bugs that harassed her sleep, here, to this place, into being at all. When she and Sal had set out she had been rather drunk on determination—she had wanted Sal, and all the others too, but really mostly Sal, to know what it was she was truly capable of. Now she wasn’t sure if she was capable of anything.

  A great bird soared above. A cloud passed over the sun, dimming the valley. Then it traveled on and all was bathed in gold again. Her heart was beating like a drum.

  Then the herd returned, lifted the dust, came their way.

  She wanted no harm to come to any living thing. But she knew the persistent hunger she felt, as did all the others who had survived the Princess. She saw the hollowness in the eyes of the children, saw how spindly their arms had become. The spear was heavy with purpose in her hand—she fixed the nearest of the pigs in her sights, and asked its forgiveness. Once upon a time she had stood at the margins of ballrooms and decided that the attention of a certain young man would be hers. So it was now. She lifted her arm, she put the power of all her days into the hurling of the spear. As if by magic it sailed, it hit, just where she knew it would—sinking through the back of the pig, down through its chest.

  Sal whistled. She was sure he hadn’t believed she’d be able to hit her mark, and she turned for the gratification of seeing him having to acknowledge he was wrong. But his head was bent, as though to honor the fallen animal.

  The other pigs reared and howled. They circled their injured member. Sal was at attention again—with his long, whip-like arms he hurled rocks one after another until the pigs disappeared back into the thicket.

  A kind of madness whooshed through Vida. Every tiny part of her body was alive with unbearable power. The beat of her heart went on steadily, a little louder than before.

  She seemed to ride above herself after that—she was aware that they tied up the pig in the tablecloth, that they carried the heavy body back up and down the mountain, that Sal’s breath was even and calm, and that he matched her pace the whole time.

  She was grateful for the way he allowed her silence.

  The other survivors cheered and danced at the sight of their kill. They chanted her name in praise. She smiled at their celebrations but didn’t know what to say. The sun was on its downward trajectory by then, and she was relieved by this, for everything was a little too much at just that moment—too bright, too cacophonous, too humid, too
real.

  She undid what remained of the rope around her waist, and, without thinking, walked out on the rocks. She leapt from one rock to the other, moving out along the peninsula until she was surrounded by the ocean. From the last rock she swooped, dove. Her arms pulled, propelling her body outward into the swelling water. At last, in the rhythm of the tide, she felt the enormous relief of being shrunken back to just herself. She was only Vida—not more, not less.

  It was only then that she thought to tread water, wheel around, and look back.

  At first it perplexed her how far the land was—how tiny the encampment had quite suddenly become. The swell lifted her up and pulled her down. She had the thought that she ought to be afraid. But before fear could grip her, she saw the darkness of a body moving through the waves. Sal reached her in another minute, and he too began to tread water.

  “There’s a mean current,” he called over the spray.

  “Oh?” she asked, as though it had nothing very much to do with her. Of course it had everything to do with her. The realization that he had risked his own safety was a tightness in her belly.

  “We’ll have to swim along the shore!” The usual knot of his hair had come undone, and he pushed it back from his face so that it hung wet and sleek behind his ears. She could see that he was out of breath—she might have noticed that she was out of breath, too, if she hadn’t been feeling quite so manic and powerful. Without discussion they began to swim, side by side, parallel to the beach. They swam a long time, and eventually, when Sal gave the sign, they reached the rocks at the far end of the long beach, and began to carefully make their way back to the sand.

  Even back on land the swaying of the ocean was still in her body. Her limbs felt heavy. Sal, indefatigable in the waves, moved slowly now, and as if in surrender fell against the sand and threw wide his arms. She lay down beside him without thinking. She could hear the rise and fall of his chest as his breath slowed. Only then did it occur to her that she had been listening to his breath all day.

  What a scandal this would have been back home! She was dripping wet, glittery with sand, wearing bloomers that didn’t even cover her knees, and an undershirt that left bare her shoulders, and she was brown as toast. But try as she might, she couldn’t find any shame lurking in the back corners of her mind. He glanced at her, and she saw the stars in his dark eyes.

  Where shame might have been there were other feelings. She felt giddy, and nervous, and pleased with everything. Her first instinct was to fill the quiet with nonsense—she wanted to tell him things she remembered, or hoped for, or point at some insignificant detail of the landscape. Yet no detail seemed particularly insignificant, and there was something in the quiet between them that was delicious and that she didn’t want to disturb. She shifted her body onto its side, so that she faced him, supported her head on her fist, and they watched the sun on its evening sojourn.

  “Have you ever noticed,” he asked, when the sun was a melting half circle on the gleaming edge of the ocean, “that it never looks the same?”

  “That’s true,” she said. Everything she had done that day vibrated under her skin. Her body was tired and peaceful.

  “Come on,” he said, clambering to his feet and offering his hand. “We’ll miss the feast.”

  Once on her feet she waited for him to release her hand. But he didn’t, and she found that she didn’t want to either, as though to let go would mean letting go of that perfect moment, lying in the sand while the waves crashed in and out.

  “Well?” she asked, when it had been much too long and the sensation of his palm against her palm was filling her belly with butterflies.

  His eyes glistened in the twilight. “Well what?”

  Once again she had the sense of a cliff, of an opportunity to say something that frightened her and that once said would be impossible to unsay. “Well,” she said, dropping his hand. “Should we go back?”

  “Yes.” He looked away. “We should go back.”

  It pained her to release that moment of perfect contentedness. But somehow she felt that it would come and go and return again no matter what she did.

  The smell of the fire, the wood smoke, reached them as they walked back toward the camp. For a minute or two there was nothing wrong in the world. Then she saw the flash of white in the woods—saw Camilla, watching from between the trees.

  In her eyes, Vida saw what she must look like. Saw the horrifying impropriety that Vida had been blind to while she lay on the beach with Sal, but which was the atmosphere she had breathed all her life. When she saw Camilla’s face, Vida remembered all the social codes she was currently breaking. And she remembered Fitz, who Camilla had loved, and who was not here now to see her being so familiar with Sal.

  Even so, it was hard to take all those rules seriously here. That elaborate etiquette, those codes of behavior, seemed a game now. Even Dame Edna, whose profession was to record the doings of the highly civilized and elaborately dressed, didn’t believe in those rules. Maybe, really, those rules were just a meager and unimaginative way to order one’s days. For the first time, she wondered if she wasn’t better off—if she wasn’t a better person entirely—without any of those rules at all.

  Twenty-Four

  For the rest of her years, Vida would remember this lesson: no garden, however Edenic, is immune to the wild weather of one’s internal life.

  In that brief interlude at the water’s edge, she had been so at ease that she thought nothing could ever disturb her again. But within the hour, and only a beach’s width away, that ease was like an experience a thousand years in the past. Around the big fire a throb of anxiety overtook her. The women looked askance, they said private things in each other’s ears, and Vida’s thoughts rushed on hurly-burly.

  For a brief and heady moment she hadn’t cared at all what anybody else thought. But just as fast she found out that she did, that it was not so easy to shake off a lifetime of conditioning.

  She looked for Sal, but could not find him. Anyway, she knew that she should not go seeking his company just now. She should avoid suspicion.

  Yet she was troubled; her skin crawled with their stares. And she wondered if it was because she had hunted, because she had killed. Or was it because she had been swimming alone with Sal (and what did that signify anyway)? There were so many ways in which she was bad, she felt a little crazed by them all. And had the others added something extra from their own imagination—had rumors begun already of something untoward between her and Fitzhugh’s man?

  Nothing happened! said the petulant child who rambled on and on in her head.

  But who exactly was that child arguing with?

  The smell of meat cooking was so strong, Vida felt sick and crept away from the fire.

  In the night she was harassed by bad dreams.

  In her dreams, she passed through the fine rooms of her glorious social career, wearing clean clothes, between the beautifully embellished skirts of the ladies who decorated the manicured, topiary-laden lawns of the leisure class. But when these ladies turned their faces on her, it was with the masks of tragedy hiding their real features. All of this was quite substantial and real. Then, in the next moment, it was slipping away through the trapdoors of her mind, and she was sweating on a mat on the ground, beside Eleanor, Miss Flynn, Sonja, and Sonja’s children.

  She pulled her bloomers and her shirt from where she hung them in the night to air out, and pulled them over her underthings, and went into the morning, which was still fresh and a little cool.

  The memory of yesterday’s swim disinclined her from her usual routine, and as she stood there, outside the huts where the other members of the camp snored and rested after their feast, she could not shake the foreboding of the dream.

  Vida walked along the palms that cut through the jungle, to the pool at the base of the waterfall. After swimming in the ocean so often she was surprised by the stillness of that pool, how cool it was, and she swam under the spray of the falls, and emerged i
n the room demarcated by its watery curtain. She felt a little better in the noisy quiet of falling water. But when she swam back under and emerged, the heavy knot of her hair became waterlogged. Camilla was standing at the side of the pool.

  Have you come to slander me to my face was what Vida wanted to say, but instead a very neutral “Are you here to bathe?” filled the air between them.

  “No.” Camilla shook her head for emphasis and worked her hands together. Her petticoat covered the length of her legs, same as yesterday, and the purple bodice cinched the narrow of her waist. “I was looking for you.”

  Vida made circles with her arms through the greenish water. There was more light and warmth in the sky now, but she was still a little cold and wanted to climb onto the dry rocks. Yet she felt shy of Camilla suddenly. “Why?” she asked.

  “Don’t you want to get out?” Camilla asked.

  “Yes.”

  Camilla offered her hand, and with surprising strength assisted Vida in clambering onto the rocks at the edge of the pool.

  “Thank you,” Vida said, when Camilla didn’t seem likely to say anything, and all the stillness and low murmur of nature was contributing to a rather awkward creeping feeling that jittered Vida’s toes.

  “Isn’t that funny,” Camilla replied. “I was here to thank you.”

  Vida watched Camilla suspiciously. “Thank me?”

  “Well, yes. You might have made me talk about Fitzhugh, when we were on the peak, and you didn’t. You’ve been so kind and accepting of our . . . unusual history. I like that we both cared for him. Anyway, then you brought us food, real food!”

  Vida smiled. A swell of pride came over her. “And here I thought you were here to shame me.”

  “Why would you ever think . . . ?”

  “Last night, when I was coming back along the beach, I saw you, in the woods.”

  “Oh.” Camilla laughed nervously. “Yes, I must have looked ghoulish there amongst the trees. I was there because you went off. I was terribly worried about you, swimming out in the current. I wanted to make sure you were all right. I guess I still want to make sure you’re all right.”