Enchanted Islands

by Allison Amend

  What choice did I have? I was rowed back to shore in silence, a cloth full of canned goods, tied into a knot like a hobo’s bundle, on my lap. I didn’t care what Ainslie thought of Hancock, I was accepting his canned goods. Some green beans and sugared peaches would do us good.

  *

  Whatever had transpired between the men on the ship, it was clear Ainslie didn’t want to talk about it. He looked pale, didn’t whistle. He ate little (well, for Ainslie he ate little). And he spent the better part of one afternoon claiming to help me weed the garden and instead looking off at the sea while chewing his pipe. I decided to ask him what was in the letter Hancock gave him. I tried to phrase it casually, like it had just occurred to me, and so I mentioned it as I was putting our dinner on the table: canned beans and pork. “Oh, is there anything I need to know about that letter from Hancock?”

  Ainslie put down his pipe. He looked at me funny, as though he didn’t know what I was talking about. “Oh that, no.”

  “No?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Look,” I sat down. “We are in this together. I know my clearance is not as high as yours, but the circumstances are such that I need to know what you do, so I can help, or at least not hinder, and most of all so I don’t get into danger.”

  Ainslie appeared to consider this statement.

  “You’ve done things,” I continued, “that put us at risk. Us. So I want to know what’s going on.” Ainslie knew what I was referring to. He blushed and looked away, helping himself to more beans. He put a large spoonful in his mouth and added some pork. His manners had really gotten atrocious. I’d have to remind him before he ate like that in company. Ainslie did everything full throttle. He ate greedily, drank too much, was constantly busy, indulged in sweets whenever possible and, now I knew, also in strange love. He could never control his appetites.

  He swallowed. “I know,” he said.

  I scraped the bottom of the pot to scoop the last bit of beans onto Ainslie’s plate. “What did Hancock do, do you think, that he was conscripted for this? They must have something on him, right?”

  Ainslie finished his plate and put down his fork. “You know how you never ask a lady her age? You never ask for a spy’s motivation. Never.”

  I bristled. I didn’t like Ainslie’s tone.

  In the past, I’d wished for home’s conveniences to be here on the island, but now I wished I were back in San Francisco, or back in Nebraska or even Duluth. And though I am not one for looking back, I permitted myself a brief wonder at what my life would have been like without Ainslie. I would have stayed in San Francisco, continued in my secretarial job, seeing movies on Sunday afternoons, spending time with Rosalie’s family. Both scenarios, the imagined and the real, were so terribly sad that uncharacteristically my eyes welled up. I looked away.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

  “Sleep tight,” Ainslie called. Why did I continue to expect him to read between the lines, even though he’d not once shown himself interested or capable of doing so? I turned away from the table.

  *

  I never saw Genevieve or Victor again. I gradually became aware that they were no longer on the island with us. Presence is noticed suddenly—a misplaced rock cairn, a stolen piece of jerky. But absence is stealthy; one day you realize that it’s been a while since there has been any disturbance and then you look more closely and notice nothing.

  I never found out what happened to them. When I asked Ainslie, his face darkened and he shook his head. To the others, he said that Victor had come to tell Ainslie that they were sick of the island and that they were catching a ride to Chatham on a fishing boat.

  “What day?” Gonzalo asked. “Did I see a fishing boat?”

  I translated from the Spanish. “I don’t know.” Ainslie shrugged. “I was arriba. He found me there, so I didn’t look.” He was a fantastic dissimulator. Liar, I supposed, was the better word.

  Perhaps they were picked up by a passing ship I didn’t see. Perhaps Ainslie arranged for their transportation off the island. Could Ainslie have…? I couldn’t ask him. I couldn’t ask him because I didn’t have clearance to know the answer, because I didn’t want to know the answer. The similarity between his story and that of the disappearance of the baroness did not escape my notice.

  Our relations became cold. Often many hours would go by without us conversing at all. It’s so easy not to speak, so hard to really talk. Ainslie chewed his pipe. I wrote in my journal. How I wanted to write what was on my mind, but it was too dangerous. All codes are breakable. And I was trying to hide most of all from my husband, and the depth of his training and commitment to military intelligence was perhaps more profound than I had thought.

  Throughout this time, our mission had been a bit murky to me. I accepted my confusion because things were moving so quickly, I didn’t have the security clearance, I was preoccupied with surviving. But now I had nothing but time to examine the predicament I had placed myself in.

  I began to avoid Ainslie. I even went to visit the Muellers once or twice, submitting to Herr Mueller’s endless lectures on German philosophy and cringing while Frau Mueller waited on him hand and foot.

  Finally, Ainslie broke the silence. “Look, I know you’re upset with me, but…” He trailed off. “I’m sorry, really. I wish so much it could be otherwise. I meant what I said. I wish I could feel about you that way, but I’m just not made like that. I know you don’t believe me, but I do love you.”

  It felt good to hear. “I guess it’s just that no one ever has.” It was not easy to say, this secret I’d held so long. Shameful, because I was sure it was my looks, and possibly my personality, that kept men away.

  I sighed. He stepped forward, warily, and I accepted his embrace. It was so nice just to lean. He kissed my hair and rocked me back and forth.

  “Oh, Franny,” he said. “We don’t get what we deserve.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It didn’t seem possible, but there she was, the San Cristóbal! I found it miraculous that she could survive another trip (though she was to survive many more, chugging along like the proverbial little engine that could). Capitán Oswaldo put in at Post Office Bay, and we rushed down to say hello and retrieve our mail and news.

  The first panga was coming toward us, and it contained, along with Oswaldo and the mate who rowed, two Caucasians, a man and a woman. The woman stepped out of the boat wearing a full skirt, which I thought very impractical. Like Genevieve, she was in her early forties, sturdy. Her hair had a defiant shock of white at the crown. Her husband was dressed more for a garden party than a remote island—linen pants (how had he kept them creased?) and a collared shirt. After El Capitán kissed us like we were old friends (though last time we parted I heard him mutter “me tocan los cojones”—a benign translation of which would be “pain in the butt” but more colorful), he introduced us to the new couple. Unsurprisingly, they were German: Elke and Heinrich. They were coming to stay; we were getting new neighbors.

  Was it coincidence that just two months after Genevieve and Victor left, a new German couple came? I knew she was most likely the enemy; still, something about her was…friendly. She smiled with her entire face, eyebrows up and lips wide. I realized how starved I’d been for friendship, and there is nothing quite like female companionship. We could not have been more different—I lanky and slight, she squat; I American and Jewish, she German—but still I recognized something of a kindred spirit in her.

  The men were likewise hitting it off splendidly. Heinrich had gratefully accepted Ainslie’s offer of tobacco and both were now smoking, stretched out in the shade like cats. Neither had a scrap of the other’s language, but they managed to communicate through gestures, diagrams in the sand, and a few cognates, that they had both fought in France in the Great War (though on opposite sides, of course) but shared a hatred of the French that transcended that now-defunct animosity (though I didn’t understand at the time how muc
h hostilities were ramping up between our two nations as we spoke). Ainslie towered over him, as if they were different species, and Heinrich’s full head of hair put Ainslie’s straw fluff to shame. They took turns imitating French soldiers, much to the other’s delight. I looked over and sighed. Boys will still be boys, even when they are men and most likely employed at cross-purposes. Elke saw my expression and laughed, which reminded me pleasantly of the sound of rice being poured into a bowl.

  Elke’s English was decent; she had been educated in her home country. She also spoke competent Spanish, as they had been living on San Cristóbal for about six months. They found it too commercial, she said. There were always boats in port, fishermen haggling, tourists. They wanted a quieter island, otherwise why bother coming halfway around the world? She had two children, she said, but their father (who was apparently not Heinrich) insisted they attend boarding school in Switzerland, so they moved from Europe in part to ease the pain of missing them. I told her that we had been living in California and wanted to try our hand at self-sufficiency.

  At this she brightened. “California? Do you know Marlene Dietrich?”

  I laughed. “That’s Hollywood, Los Angeles,” I said. “We lived in San Francisco. But I did have a friend who once was in a film where she served Greta Garbo coffee.”

  This did not impress Elke. She uttered a sort of “harrumph” noise that I would come to learn indicated dissatisfaction. She folded her small hands together at her belly like a schoolmarm.

  The panga kept making trips to and from the boat. How much had they brought? There were boxes and boxes and crates and crates. I was impressed they’d convinced El Capitán to transport all that. He was very strict about the number and weight of boxes we’d brought aboard. I was surprised to discover that they brought a dog, a mix of German shepherd and what looked like wolf, who was very serious. She sniffed my crotch carefully, sized me up, and went to sit near Ainslie. They also had a nanny goat with them for milk. I thought greedily of all the delicious food I could make with access to dairy, even goat dairy. (Though there were goats and cows on the island, they were impossible to domesticate.)

  I studied Ainslie, nervous of a repeat of his previous relationship, but I found no sign of attraction on either end. I believed him when he said he regretted the relationship with Victor. We had a lovely picnic with Elke and Heinrich, El Capitán, and a Canadian named Joe we’d met previously who was hitching a ride to Santa Cruz.

  Ainslie helped Heinrich move the boxes up the beach, and we showed them to the remains of our beach camp. By now the Jiménezes had arrived at the beach in their official capacity as regional representatives to greet the newcomers and promise Chuclu for their labors. I even offered to play hooky from my duties the following day and show them where Genevieve and Victor had lived, so they wouldn’t have to start from scratch in homemaking, regretting it even as I said it. I had things to do and this would take all day. Thankfully, they declined.

  Walking back home with Ainslie, he teased me about volunteering my time. “Will you make their beds every day, Franny? Do their taxes?” He had improved the road such that we could walk abreast. It might have been a “damn fool” thing to waste his time on, but the new road was nicer than the game trail that used to be our Main Street.

  “Very funny,” I said. “As it happens, I like her.”

  “Yes,” Ainslie said, “were they not our enemies, they would most likely be our friends.”

  “Isn’t enemy a strong word?” I tripped on a root and Ainslie caught my arm automatically.

  “Hitler is dangerous. More dangerous even than Franco or Mussolini. And if the Three Stooges form an alliance, or join with the Japanese, it’s not good news.”

  “But are they necessarily representatives of their government? I hardly want to be blamed for Warren Harding.”

  “I’m just saying be friendly but not too friendly.”

  “And you and Victor weren’t too friendly?” I meant this lightheartedly, as least I thought I did. I thought we were teasing each other, but Ainslie took offense. Instead of saying anything, he strode on ahead of me, leaving me to negotiate my own way in the growing dark.

  *

  I let a couple of weeks go by, and then I paid a visit to Elke. The dog heard me approach and came to greet me, sniffing at my hands and rooting around my pockets looking for treats. Elke greeted me with a warm pumping handshake and invited me in. She had settled in much more quickly than Ainslie and I had, but to what end? Did she need drapes, and did they need to match the tablecloth? Did she need a tablecloth?

  The ostensible reason for my visit was to borrow her scissors for a haircut. I actually did need one. My bangs were low over my eyes and were driving me crazy. “Reinkommen,” she said, swinging the makeshift door wide. She looked genuinely pleased to see me.

  I pantomimed scissors with my fingers while I asked to borrow them. This became our habit, an invented simultaneous sign-language translation of our speech.

  Elke plucked a slightly rusty pair of scissors off a nail hook. “Here,” she said in English. “I do it.”

  I sat down in the chair and she brought over some water. She wet my hair carefully. Inside her house it was somehow quieter than it was outside, or in mine; the birds chirped mutedly and the rustle of the breeze stilled.

  Her hands were not gentle but rather matter-of-fact. She combed through my mess, holding the hair at the root to prevent it from pulling as she eased out the tangles. I could smell her—we all smelled on Floreana, but Elke had a tinge of sweetness about her, as though she had daubed her skin in maple syrup. I closed my eyes and relaxed into her ministrations.

  When she had wet the hair, she took a line of it between her fingers and cut straight with the other hand. I could see my reflection in the small mirror above the basin used as a sink. I looked old, freckled.

  I had thought I wouldn’t miss female friendship; the girls I lived with at the boardinghouse had mostly annoyed me. Rosalie is really the only woman I’ve ever been close to. I’ve never had time for fussing with my hair or trying on different frocks. But I did miss it. Elke’s hand reminded me of Rosalie smoothing my hair behind my ear and I felt a cloud of homesickness.

  When Elke was done my hair looked serviceable at best, but what did I care? We sat and ground wheat for a while, gossiping in two languages about how silly our husbands were. Elke did an uncanny Heinrich imitation—his pipe-chewing, small-man swagger. And she laughed kindly as I dramatized Ainslie’s obsessive straightening of anything not perfectly lined up.

  “What made you want to come to the Galápagos?” I asked. She had told me the basics of her story at the beach, but I was wondering if there was a more complicated narrative. I reminded myself to watch her face as she answered to see if she was lying.

  “Heinrich is a journalist,” she said. “The magazine pay that we come here and write about living without…Zivilisation.”

  “Civilization.” I supplied the word.

  Elke went back to her mending while she talked. “Also,” she said, “Heinrich y yo tenemos problemas. My husband very enfadado that I am with Heinrich. He send the Kinder to boarding school, make problems for me.” She wiped away a furtive tear that I pretended not to see. So she and Heinrich weren’t married. I tried to muster disapproval for this “sin” but it was weak, vestigial, like the wings on a flightless cormorant. The islands were changing me; I no longer cared what others did. Society’s rules no longer applied; there was no society.

  I knew she had answered me with emotional honestly, even if she was not exactly factually forthcoming.

  “You?” Elke asked.

  “Me?”

  “Why do you come to Galápagos, Franzi?” Her nickname for me stuck.

  I gave her our cover story, that we were here to help cure Ainslie’s tuberculosis while getting away from civilization and trying our hand at survivalism. The story, as it came out of my mouth, sounded implausible. Elke said nothing, but I continued, unprompted
. “Also, this is the only place Ainslie will stop drinking. And stop…wandering.”

  I was being honest as well, though of course the island hadn’t stopped his wandering. She betrayed no reaction, and for her lack of judgment I would forever respect her and be grateful.

  *

  Elke came to my house the following week in search of a rolling pin. I happened to have seen one in her house the previous week, so I knew right away that she had arrived to chat with me or to suss me out. I made coffee and we talked for a while.

  She said, “I see camotes not happy, ja?”

  The plants were wilting, it was true, though I watered and weeded them religiously.

  “You mind I help?” She stood up and walked out to the garden. “Here,” she switched to Spanish, “hay que ponerlos en una montaña, así,” she pulled one out halfway, building up the soil around it like a volcano. “They like it much more better if they are arriba.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ve been having trouble with them since we arrived. In fact, I’d never eaten one until this year, and now I don’t care if I never eat another again!”

  Elke laughed. “I help, Franzi.” And so together we created little hills for my camotes.

  I said, “Your English is excellent. How did you learn it?”

  “We study in the school,” she said. “But it is no good.”

  “It’s better than my German.” I laughed. “I can only say ‘Ich habe hunger.’ ”

  “It is a phrase we say much on Floreana, no?” We had reached the end of the row. We started on the next row and worked our way back to the house. “Yes. In Germany I go to one special school where the children are learning English. Not French. And now I learn Spanish.”

  I smiled. “I’m studying Spanish here, but it’s not going very well.”