Easter Island (14 page)

Fastening the straps of her backpack, she eased herself down the cliff, carefully placing each foot on the loose rocks. Finally on flat ground, she had just shrugged her pack off, when she heard the faint sound of footsteps against the rough basalt. She looked around the cliff’s face to see an old man in loose brown chinos and a beige sweater climbing the rocks toward the path, his footholds fast and light, noticeably more confident than her own. An islander. His hair was thick and gray, his eyebrows unruly. Nervously glancing at Greer, he passed out of sight. Just then a breeze carried the smell of food: roasted meat, the sweet smell of yams. On the rocks about twenty yards from her, she spotted a plate covered with a metal lid, a halo of steam curling from its edges. It was odd, this abandoned meal, but then again, the island seemed governed by its own rules and rituals.

Greer sat and pulled out the lunch Mahina had packed—two bananas, a cheese sandwich, and a warm bottle of cola. In the distance, a small jetty stretched into the water, frayed ropes hanging from its rocks. Beneath her, the sea splashed the cliff and she listened, with surprising contentment, to the rhythm of the waves. Greer had always liked the ocean, and in Marblehead those past few months, when the confusion of mourning Thomas seemed overwhelming, it was the ocean that had calmed her. But here, above this endless sea, in this place so far away, she felt more than calmness: She felt the first small hint of joy returning. She’d made it to Easter Island, and she was doing her first solo field research. Greer pulled out her notebook and began to write:

Day 1:
Initial survey of current vegetation of northwest coast of island: extensive Gramineae and ferns, without apparent shrubbery or ground cover. One sample (A1) of possible Lycium taken two miles beyond village of Hanga Roa. (Are berries edible to humans? What are the other possible faunal predators of fruit? Means of dispersal?)

Soil eroded and dry. Approximately two dozen coconut palms grow at Anakena beach on the island’s northern coast, but beyond that there is no—

The blowhole released another whistle, a spray of seawater fell over her, and when Greer looked up, above the steaming plate stood a ghostly figure. An old woman, pale and slender, barefoot, in a soiled smock. The wind stirred her long white hair. Her legs bent gingerly as she lifted the plate. Then she turned to Greer.

“
Iorana!
” Greer shouted. “Windy.
Viento! Fuerte!
” You never knew what difference a friendly word might make. “The view,” Greer said, her arms sweeping out to the ocean, “. . .
el mar, hermoso
.”

The old woman scanned the horizon.

“
Hermoso!
” Greer repeated.

“Vai kava nehe nehe,”
the woman said, her voice low and brittle, almost lost in the rumble of the water. She turned toward the cliff and disappeared.

Sliding forward, Greer saw a small crack in the face of the rock, a sliver of an opening. Of course, a cave. The whole island was perforated with relics of its volcanic past: lava tubes left by the magma that flowed thousands of years earlier. Beneath the yellow grass, beneath the basalt, these caves formed a subterranean world of elaborate passageways hidden from view, littered with the skeletons of ancient islanders. According to oral history, the caves had served as shelters and hideouts during turbulent times; in them, families had slept and cooked and waited, and, when needed, had buried their dead. The early Christians, too, thought Greer, understood the benefit of underground networks, digging burial chambers beneath ancient Rome, then, during times of religious persecution, taking refuge belowground, beside the dead. Strange how mausoleums often became sanctuaries.

Many of the island’s caves were still thought undiscovered. The one before her, though, seemed to serve as the old woman’s home. How many more, she wondered, were still inhabited?

Greer quickly finished her lunch—it was getting late—and resumed writing her morning’s observations. She detailed the path she’d taken, the weather, the number of horses she’d seen. She had promised herself to take extensive notes, to document each step of her research as though she were, in fact, responsible for turning the notes over to the nonexistent society that funded her research. But now, at the bottom of the page, Greer added a small note inappropriate for an official log, the kind of note at which Thomas would have shaken his head.

An old woman who lives in one of the caves fetched a plate of hot food that had been left outside by an elderly man. She seems some sort of hermit. Interesting. She is pale, with white hair. One of the oho-tea race.

Vai kava nehe nehe—
translate.

Smiling Greer closed her notebook, packed up the remains of her lunch, and made her way back toward the village as the sun fell in the sky.

After returning her horse, Greer walked through the streets of Hanga Roa toward the
residencial.
It was eight
P
.
M
., and the few shops along Avenida
Policarpo Toro had closed. On the corner, a small restaurant seemed to be coming to life. A man in a brown button-down shirt carried chairs and tables to the dusty street, shook checkered cotton cloths across the tabletops, clinked down salt and pepper shakers. A few tourists had already been seated, extricating themselves from their visors and camera straps, piling guidebooks on the tables. Snatches of Spanish and German and English mingled in the street. This was the only life in sight. As she turned onto Te Pito O Te Henua Street, she spotted Vicente Portales walking with a newspaper tucked in the crook of his arm. Greer noticed the precision of his posture. He wasn’t tall, but the way he held his shoulders made him seem so. He waved and approached her with an easy confidence.

“You see? A small island.”

“Apparently.”

His eyes took in her bulging backpack. “It seems you’ve had a busy day of exploring. Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Yes,” said Greer, but she couldn’t very well say she had preferred a long stare at the ocean to the world-famous
moai.
“It’s an interesting place.”

“Good word: interesting. Beautiful, no. But yes, very, very interesting. Perhaps the most interesting place I have ever been.”

“How long have you been here?”

“A difficult question. For work five months. But I take trips to the mainland, on the Lan Chile flight, as you know. Well, I would very much like to hear about your work, what you are studying. The
sociedad
seems to know little about the people they host and yet if we share our knowledge we will all enhance the work of each other. Will you join me for a pisco sour?”

Greer had amassed enough questions about the island that talking to someone who knew the terrain appealed to her. And as he’d said, the town was small. She glanced at her watch. Mahina had said dinner was at nine tonight; she had an hour.

“So what exactly is a pisco sour?”

“It is one of the typical drinks of Chile, Doctor Farraday! You must try one. Unfortunately, we have no bars here. Vittorio over there”—he pointed to the man carrying tables and chairs—“is trying to start the first restaurant. But it is for tourists. We will have a drink Rapa Nui–style. Okay?”

“A Chilean drink, then,” she said.

They walked down the street to the place where she’d bought her groceries. The door was now closed, but Vicente knocked. “
Iorana!
Mario? Vicente
aqui!
” Soon Mario emerged with a groggy smile. “Ah! Marblehead!
Iorana! Hola,
Vicente
!
”

“Una botella de pisco sour?”
asked Vicente.

“Sí, sí.”
Mario disappeared into the dark store, returning a moment later with a bottle and two tin cups.

“Maururu,”
said Vicente.

They wandered downhill to the
caleta,
where a dozen small fishing boats fanned out from the docks, and seated themselves on the low stone wall overlooking the harbor. Vicente spread his newspaper between them, flipping through the pages, until an article caught his eye. “This one I’ve read.” He flattened the paper and set the bottle and two cups on it.

“You see?” He pointed to the paper’s date. “Only three days old. Quite a valuable item on Rapa Nui. We shall try not to spill.” He twisted open the bottle. “Now, I know only that you are here for core samples. You caused the
sociedad
quite some trouble asking for a refrigerator. One of their bureaucrats thought it was for your food.” As he spoke, he pulled a bandana from his pocket and wiped off both cups. “Many accusations were made about the luxuries required by American researchers. Of course, they soon had one of their experts explain that cores must remain cold.”

“Well, I’m here to study fossil pollen records. I’d like to find out what plants were here, how long ago, what happened to them. A decent lake core will contain pollen from several thousand years.”

“Plants, yes,” he said, pouring the cloudy liquid into each cup. “An important piece of the mystery. It will bring us one step closer to understanding this island.”

“And you?”

“I am trying to decipher the
rongorongo.
”

“The mysterious tablets.”

“No one has yet been able to decipher the writing. But to understand what’s written on those pieces of wood would very much enhance our understanding of what happened on this island.”

“What kind of wood are they made of?”

“Ah, a botanist’s question! We believe some are the
toromiro
tree. Others are laurel, or myrtle. I believe there is one of ash. Of course, there are only twenty-one left. The nineteenth-century missionaries made the islanders burn them. Many, it is said, were hidden in caves, but they’ve never been found.”

“I’d love to look at them. To look at the wood.”

“Next time you are in Europe, perhaps. London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Leningrad. They are in museums there. Only three remain in this hemisphere. Two in Santiago and one in Concepción. I first saw them in Santiago, many many years ago, and that is what ignited my interest in decipherment. I was young, and their mystery lured me. But now . . .” He handed her a cup. “Your pisco sour, señora.”

“
Gracias.
”

Vicente watched her lift the cup to her mouth. The liquid was tart and strong, like a margarita with lemon juice.

“It’s good,” she rasped.

“Pisco is made from muscat grapes from the Elqui Valley, what we call the Zona Pisquera, north of Santiago. A beautiful region for hiking or hang gliding, where the water from the Andes comes down. In Chile we all drink pisco. But most foreigners don’t like the pisco without the sour mix—it is too sweet for them. And too strong.
Pisquo
is an aboriginal word which means ‘flying bird.’ We believe it was used to explain the feeling of one’s head when one is drunk. In a few moments you’ll see.” He smiled and took a sip, his eyes lingering on the cup. “Do you like our little Rapa Nui tavern here?”

“Very nice.”

There was something in the pleasure he took in this moment—sitting on a stone wall pouring drinks into tin cups—that made Greer think he came from wealth. As though all things simple or archaic were, for him, the true luxuries.

“But if there are no tablets left on the island, why do you stay?”

“You mean the place doesn’t strike you as the kind of island on which to remain indefinitely? Yes, an excellent question.” It seemed he had asked himself this many times. “Of course, at first I did hope to find more tablets here. But I have given up on that. You see, if the script is not alphabetic, if it is symbolic, then it is likely the symbols originated as representations of the objects relevant to the early Rapa Nui. The best way, of course, to determine any relationships between the characters and real-world things is to examine the real-world things. Language relates to life. It emerges from life. For example, the Rapa Nui now have a new phrase:
peti etahi
. It means ‘peach one,’ or, as you say in English, ‘peachy.‘
Peti
has entered the language just recently because the Chilean supply boat brought a new product to the island—canned peaches. Before, there were no peaches on the island. But now they are everywhere, and the people love them! Anything that is good, anything they like, is
peti etahi.
”

“Have you found any correlations?”

“Many symbols appear to be birds, or part bird, part man. Some appear to be fish. And many, in fact, look like trees.”

“Trees? That’s surprising.”

“It is my interpretation, though. The
rongorongo
is a great mystery, the most spectacular achievement of this island. The
moai
bring the tourists. But the
rongorongo
, well . . . we are speaking of something that has occurred only five times in the history of the world.” Vicente held his fist in the air, and with each name lifted a finger. “Mesopotamia, Mexico, Egypt, and China. These are the only places where a written language was
invented
. Every other instance of writing has been borrowed, or revised, from those four. Four spontaneous inventions of writing. Plus here, on my favorite island”—his thumb went up—“number five. And the only script not yet deciphered.”

“Your task,” she said.

“Yes, my task.”

“Sounds like convergent evolution,” said Greer.

“Biology talk?”

“The same developments turn up in different species on separate continents, even in different epochs. The American cactus and the African spurge—oceans apart, but you’d swear they were related. Same swollen stems, same aureoles. Or the milkwort and the sweet pea. Entirely different families, but nine out of ten botanists couldn’t tell their flowers apart. Even those helicopter seeds of maple and ash and tipu trees. Different species, different places, but they all come up with the propeller shape. Some developments just make sense.”

“Like the creation of writing.”

“Exactly.”

“And it evolved in only five places. One of them right here,” he said, patting the stone wall. “Quite something.”