Enchanted Islands (18 page)

“A hotel that's been recommended,” Ainslie said.

“By whom? The guidebook says—”

“Ask him,” he urged.

I asked him in my pidgin Spanish, which the boy understood, taking up two suitcases that were almost as big as he was. He yelled for two of his friends, who grabbed the trunk between them and hauled it to the road. They looked so small, their skin brown and leathery from the sun.

The ride they hailed us was not exactly a taxi but rather another friend of theirs who drove what used to be a car and was now four wheels with a rusted hood held together by sailor's rope. Still, we piled our luggage and ourselves in, and Ainslie handed the boys a few coins. “Did you give them American money?” I asked, for we'd been unable to change currencies before our trip.

“No, I exchanged some money down at the port.”

“On the black market?” I was shocked, and worried. We were expected to conduct ourselves with propriety when it came to local law.

“We're south of the border now, dear,” he said. “And the rates are better. Hang on for the ride!”

After we got settled in at the hotel, which could best be described as “adequate,” we were expected to check in at the consulate. The consul had a reputation as an egotistical man, who would take our intelligence presence as evidence that he wasn't trusted enough to keep tabs on the islands. So we maintained our cover as American civilians who wanted to “get away from it all.” Also, the fewer people who knew about Operation Pomegranate, the easier it would be to keep it secret. Secrets have a tendency to spread in unpredictable ways, like ink on a page.

Ainslie went to meet with him, but he kept Ainslie waiting an hour and then insisted that he return—he didn't have the right papers, and then those didn't contain the right stamp. He was merely exercising his meager power. Ainslie had little else to do, or he would have ignored this pompous man entirely.

“He reminded me that should we have to be rescued, we'd be leaching resources from the United States, which we must love, of course, less than he does. I had to bite my tongue to remind him that I'd been in France during the Great War and lost more for this country than he could ever hope to gain.”

“His current opinion of the German situation on Floreana?”

“A colony of utopianists who have fled civilization to prove themselves modern-day Swiss Family Robinsons. He may have something there. Germans do seem particularly susceptible to ideas, do they not?” Certainly Hitler's rise would indicate that this was true. “They're antagonizing Poland again, like an older sibling teases the younger one.”

I nodded. Despite having Polish parents, I knew very little about the old country, not even the name of the village my parents had come from. My father had never spoken of his life—actually, he rarely spoke at all, which is why Ainslie's talkativeness was both a surprise and a delight.

The
San Cristóbal
showed no sign of hurrying to the islands, and we were captive to its whims; there was no other transportation. When I asked when it might leave, I was met with shrugs. Could be days, could be weeks. But an estimate? Ecuadorians don't estimate, it turns out. So we made ourselves as comfortable as possible for a wait of unknown duration, victims of
mañana
.

I would walk down to the embassy every day to see if a telegram or package had come for us. There was usually something weekly from Childress, transmitted in a simple code that I was in charge of transcribing. One of our frustrations was having our orders countermanded constantly. If Childress would tell us to jump, Rear Admiral Holmes would tell us to squat, and then he would get a directive from CNO Admiral Leahy, saying that we should crawl on our bellies like reptiles. As a result, our reaction when receiving most orders was to simply wait until the next week's came.

So we busied ourselves readying supplies. In addition to everything we would need for an indefinite stay, we also had to conceal a radio, flares, flags, and weapons. A hunting rifle was easy enough to hide, but it was a serious calculation to decide how much flour to sacrifice in exchange for ammunition. Our stomachs or our lives, which would occasionally amount to the same thing.

By force of having nothing else to do, my study of German was coming along. The only problem was that I had no one to practice with and therefore my knowledge was theoretical and literary rather than fluent. Would I understand an actual person when he or she spoke?

It was hot in Guayaquil, and foreign, and after two weeks my spirits were low. Ainslie tried to cheer me up, but the fact that we were nearly strangers merely increased my despondency.

“So tell me, bride,” he'd say. “What's your favorite ice-cream flavor?”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “Vanilla maybe?”

Another time: “Do you like turkey?”

Me: “What does it matter? There won't be a delicatessen on Floreana.”

Ainslie: “True, true, but just humor me.”

Me: “I've actually grown fond of bacon.”

Ainslie raised his eyebrows at this one. “Well,” he said. “You always want what's forbidden to you. Yes, the forbidden fruit, that might be my favorite food.”

Ainslie walked the streets by himself after dinner. I think he would go down to the wharf to watch the ships. One night he came home with a chocolate bar. It was Ecuadorian chocolate, rough and bitter, and I have an aversion to chocolate, but I thanked him anyway. I recognized that he was trying to be a good husband.

It was during this time that we consummated our relationship. We went out for dinner one night and imbibed what was becoming our usual excess of alcohol (my liver would be glad to get to a place where there was no booze). We completed our evening ablutions, and I climbed into my bed to read. Ainslie came out of the bathroom and instead of going to his bed, he wordlessly climbed into mine. And it was…nice. There are secrets a lady must keep to herself, even in her intimate memoirs, and so I will say no more except that we were truly married at last.

During those weeks, he acted more like my husband. He was always home for dinner and rarely went out afterward, content to sit and read and smoke his pipe. He was also fond of taking apart and putting back together the radio in our hotel room. When he was done, there were invariably parts left over, small screws and wires, washers, and bits of solder.

Our room had a small balcony, and Ainslie spent many hours out on it, practicing knots and snares, and smoking his pipe, lost in thought. We spoke as married couples do, about meals and errands, about funny anecdotes from our days, about the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish language. We played cards and read books. If it weren't for my anxiety about our mission, and my constant worry of contracting stomach viruses, I would have considered it a pleasant vacation.

Came the day to sail, and I sobered to discover that our ship had already consumed eight of its nine cat lives. There was even a bracket for a gun mount on the deck, dating from the motor schooner's use as a fighting ship in the Great War. Needless to say, I was not anxious to make the crossing, having finally again filled out the trousers that hung off me when we arrived on the mainland. It was a five-day sail, five miserable, tempest-toss't, stomach-churning days, our skin frying in the hot equatorial sun, until we put into port at Chatham, the regional capital.

I was shocked at the landscape of the first island. It was like a desert, with white-hot sand and rough rocks. Here and there gnarled branches of shrubbery stuck out like pimples on a young person's face, equally as angry. I later found them to be prickly to the touch and often full of pink-red berries that were veined inside with darker red and which the islanders told me not to eat, though I wasn't planning to. Higher up there were a few trees, also gnarled, like the hands of farmers, and thickset like the indigenous people.

“Welcome to Las Islas Encantadas,” I said to Ainslie.

He looked at me quizzically.

“Las Islas Encantadas, the Enchanted Isles, the old name for Galápagos. Did you not read the brief at all?”

“Of course I did,” Ainslie said. “I just didn't understand your Spanish accent.”

I gave him my best disapproving look.

“Wait, they're enchanted?” Ainslie said. “Turn the ship around!”

Our fellow passengers looked at us like we'd gone mad, two sunburned gringos yelling in English.

We anchored and took a dinghy to the dock, which was the center of a little town. Shacks had been thrown up haphazardly, in between what passed for trees. There were women waiting for us on shore, squatting on their haunches as though birthing a baby. I tried it later and fell over backward. Hips must be trained from childhood if they want to hold you up like that later in life.

Ainslie paced the dock nervously smoking, using up precious cigarettes, making sure no one stole our cargo. When he was satisfied, we went into the “town” to buy seedlings and seeds for the garden (pineapple, yucca,
camote
vines, bananas), a few chickens for eggs, lard, coffee, and tobacco, and possibly a donkey. Also, we wanted to find out what we could about Floreana and its residents.

One small hut served as a sort of general store, and we found that the proprietor spoke English, of a sort. He had been sent to the islands to serve out a prison sentence (for what, we did not ask). It was not lost on me that I was volunteering to go to a place where people were sent for punishment. Ainslie and he negotiated prices then sat down for a smoke.

I helped his wife shuck corn, and while doing so I found out the following: The most current count of souls on Floreana was nine. One German couple and their son, who had come for the salubrious salt air (the child had a congenital lung disorder). Another elderly couple had come to study with Dr. Ritter and were devastated to discover that he had died and they had crossed paths with his widow somewhere in the ocean. They stayed, however, and took over the garden at Friedo, Dore and Ritter's home, continuing their idiosyncratic Nietzschean isolationism. Another couple had lived on the island for a year or so, young, attractive, outgoing. They seemed an odd pair to be survivalists, according to this woman, but then all people who wanted to come to this godforsaken place were odd, no offense.

None taken.

There was also the governmental representative and his wife, a cousin of the woman in whose “kitchen” I was standing. My hostess apparently did not like this cousin; she spit on the ground as she said her name, which I didn't catch. All this was communicated to me in rapid-fire Spanish. The woman did not care that I spoke very little; she continued her narrative apace. I repeated back to her what I thought she said, and she nodded vigorously.

This I reported to Ainslie once we were back on the
San Cristóbal
. We stood near the motor to “sound mask.” The fumes were overwhelming but no one could hear us above the din. Ainslie had to lean down so he could hear what I was saying. I put my lips right to his ear and we took turns offering the sides of our heads.

“You are apparently a better spy than I,” he said.

“Speaking the language helps.”

“Don't rub it in. So it seems the newest residents are our most likely bet for German government representatives. The others have been here too long.”

“What if they're just people?” I asked. “How do we even know they're here for any other reason than to get away from it all?” The wind kept whipping my hair into my eyes and mouth, and I kept brushing it back.

“Are you doubting the intelligence of the United States Navy?” he asked in mock indignation. “I don't even know where this intelligence came from. We'll just live out our year, keep our eyes and ears open, and we'll have served Uncle Sam plenty. Just be Frances Conway. That's all you have to do.”

Luckily, Floreana was the next stop on the
San Cristóbal
's tour, for I was anxious to get off the ship. I craned my neck to make out the barest hint of land, and then—was that a cloud? No, it was a mountain with a rounded top, and a few minutes later it was joined by its cousins. Then it took on a green tint, and as we got closer I got a first look at our island. Cliffs, covered in birds and their “souvenirs,” fell down to the water. Here and there a little greenery would tentatively make a stab at growth, while up above scrub brush tangled with its neighbor.

We weighed anchor at Post Office Bay, a small strip of sand that rose sharply to the wall of thornbushes that guarded the bay. Hardly a warm welcome.

Floreana is shaped like a sphere, about eight miles wide, but it is impossible to cross without a team of Indios machete-ing the way for you. There is only one beach on the east side, and so it and the south side are underexplored. It has seven hills, or
cerros
. The landscape is desert from the beach up about two miles to higher ground, called
arriba
, where it becomes abruptly green, thanks to the
garúa
, the mist that lingers even in the dry season from May to December.

When the dinghy arrived ashore, I experienced such a wave of regret that I nearly burst into tears. I had expected it to be desolate, but now, faced with the utter absence of any sign of human habitation, I was nervous. An army of land and marine iguanas stood sentry, their ancient jowls seemingly salivating at our approach (they are vegetarians). The two or three sea lions who had accompanied us hoisted themselves onto the rocks and gave heavy sighs as they lay down in the sun. I asked our skipper how they could possibly be comfortable on the sharp points of lava.

Misunderstanding me, he answered, “Oh señora, you must never eat these. They are so few.”

Ainslie smiled at me and raised his eyebrows as if to say, I told you so.

He began to drag our belongings up the beach so that when the tide came in it wouldn't sweep them to sea. I went with Capitán Oswaldo to look at the post barrel, which was actually a barrel; Floreana residents used it as an official post office. They put their letters inside and the next passing ship would take them to post. The captain emptied the box; later we saw him reading the contents.