Enchanted Islands (19 page)

Returning to Ainslie, I said, “Miraculous thing, mail. How does a little piece of paper find the right person?”

Ainslie smiled. “It's a big world, but it's a small one too.” He was taking a break, leaning against the oil drum. He was wearing a shirt, which would be an uncommon occurrence in subsequent days, and its white fabric contrasted with his deep tan. His arms were sinewy with muscle. He really was a very good-looking man, my husband.

There is nothing quite like getting off a boat on an island without knowing where you will be spending the night, or rather, knowing you'll be spending it on the shore, fending off insects and curious animals. Add to this the anxiety of getting off a boat on a spy mission on an island of possibly hostile Germans, and you are bound to suffer indigestion at least. It must have registered on my face.

“Could be worse, pet,” he said.

“Could be
not
raining,” I replied. Of course, it wasn't raining. It never rained that time of year and we had heard that drought was a real worry.

“Cheer up,” Ainslie said. “We'll have lots to do and new friends to make.”

We had not even finished carrying our belongings up the beach when we had our first visitors. Of course, they spotted the boat when we entered the harbor, and began their one- or two-hour journey to the beach to see what the boat had brought, and probably to get and send some letters. I turned to see a graying blonde of about forty, cheekbones like golf balls in her expressive face. Even though she was very thin, she still had enormous breasts that were pendulously threatening to leave her threadbare blouse. She smiled; her teeth were bucked, and yet she looked at me with the confidence of someone used to finding people daunted by her beauty. A few steps behind her was a short young man, compactly built, with blond hair, cheeks red from re-burning every day.

“ 'Alo. You are coming to live on the island?” she said in Spanish, her strong German accent discernible even to me. Her face was concerned, and I didn't blame her. Any new person on a nearly deserted island would be suspicious and likely unwelcome, spy or not.

“Frances,” I said, knowing that Ainslie probably didn't understand even this much Spanish. The woman stuck out her hand. It was heavily callused. “Genevieve,” she said. She pointed to the man. “Victor.”

“Ainslie,” I pointed at Ainslie.
“Encantada.”
That much Spanish I knew. Yes, the old name of the Galápagos is also the word you use when you meet someone. We stood around looking at one another, not sure which language to speak nor what to talk about, taking each other's measure. Finally, as one unit, we went to sit under the meager shade of a small tree. Simultaneously, we offered each other water.

Ainslie pulled out his pipe. Victor's eyes lit up and so Ainslie, though I knew how much it cost him to share, handed it to him once it was lit. The two puffed together. It was seemingly all the conversation they needed. Genevieve and I tried to talk in a mixture of hand signs and broken Spanish, as I could not reveal I knew any German.

She said something in Spanish that I didn't understand. I shook my head.

“No casas,”
she said.

“Ja,”
I said, and then realized this was German. I pantomimed building one.

“Dónde dormir?”
she asked. We had no plans for where we'd sleep that night, and her question reminded me of this.

I shrugged to show that we didn't know.
“Playa,”
I said. I wouldn't have minded sleeping under a roof tonight. I hated the exposure of the beach.

Genevieve muttered something to the extent of “suit yourself.” She fingered the fabric of my blouse, now faded from the sun and salt water.
“Bonito,”
she said, clearly meaning the opposite. Our first encounter was not going well.

Just then the brush behind them began to rustle and from it emerged a pair of young cholo Indians with a donkey held loosely by a rope. They were the only plump people I'd yet seen on the islands, and it must have been a congenital situation, for I would come to see that while we didn't starve, there was not a surplus of calories. They introduced themselves as the Jiménezes, Gonzalo and his wife, Gansa, which means goose. I never learned why they called her that.

Gonzalo told us he was the Ecuadorian representative on the island. I'm not sure if he was self-appointed or actually sanctioned in an official capacity. They had lived on Floreana for almost a year and were about to celebrate their first anniversary. He kissed her and she blushed. As the government official, he informed us, he was able to marry people, if there were any people who wanted to be married. He was in charge of all large-game hunting, and he reminded us of the law that we could only kill male pigs and steers. We would come to see that he frequently ignored his own directives, as the sows and heifers were much tastier. He also felt entitled to the lion's share of anything a passing boat might gift to the island and its residents. Still, he was such a friendly person, and his wife so generous (and a good cook to boot), that we forgave him his idiosyncrasies. He had learned his governance style from Ecuadorians, after all, and he knew no better.

The other two families lived on the other side of the sierra, and would not have seen the boat. The captain left some provisions for them, and the Jiménezes promised to pass them along. Then the
San Cristóbal
pulled out of the bay, and any possibility of returning to civilization went with it. I swallowed the lump in my throat and stared after the old bucket of bolts like she was my lover going off to war.

The sun slipped down behind us; darkness fell quickly in the islands. Genevieve, Victor, Gonzalo, and Gansa had been watching us unpack. They now reluctantly took their leave, carrying some of our bounty of fruit and seedlings from Chatham we had offered. Genevieve patted me on the head in leave-taking, condescendingly, I thought, and Victor bowed deeply. Gonzalo shook my hand and Gansa kissed me on the cheek. Then Victor stepped in front of Genevieve and pulled aside a branch for her, letting it slap back afterward, almost hitting the Jiménezes. When they had disappeared into the brush, Ainslie came up behind me and whispered softly, “Don't say anything yet.”

So I unpacked our few necessary belongings in silence. Could Genevieve and Victor be our German equivalents? What if the only spying we were doing was on each other? I imagined a
College Humor
cartoon where spies trained field glasses on each other while real sabotage goes on behind them. These were the lofty ideas I was contemplating as I laid out our dinner—beef jerky, biscuits, fruit, a boiled egg.

In front of me the Pacific Ocean slumbered, placid, and a light breeze was cooling the air and keeping the bugs at bay. To my right, the trail shone with golden dust in the dying light, illuminating the hills up high with a red-violet glow.

When it grew too dark to see, Ainslie finally spoke to me. “We'll have to see tomorrow about a place to settle.” He was stating the obvious. I could hear the weariness in his voice. In the meager light of the new moon, I could see the angles of his face. “And a place for our other belongings,” he said, hinting at the radio. I nodded. I could hear the rhythm of the island—the waves on the shore, the birds calling to each other and the wind answering. Far off, I heard a bull bellowing and a donkey braying and the hum of a thousand predatory insects.

Everyone was trying to stake a claim on this island, fauna and humans alike.

The water was so calm the night we first went in. I remember that Ainslie took off his clothes and jumped in as free as a bird. I was more modest, tiptoeing to the edge of the water, afraid of the rocks underneath the thin coating of sand. I was seduced by Ainslie's yelping and hooting (the water was cold). And we were alone, really alone. Alone in a way humans rarely are on this earth. So I took off my culottes and waded in, self-conscious and chilly.

Ainslie swam toward me and peeled my hands away from my torso. The water reflected the moonlight onto his face, chiseled and pointed, the inherited genes of the Anglo-Saxons, who, Darwin-like, took on the phenotype of the craggy bluffs of Dover. He led me farther into the water, and then, once I was floating, took off swimming parallel to the shore, leaving me to tread water and contemplate what monsters of the deep might be nibbling on my toes.

I later learned there were sharks off this bay. We never swam out past the break again.

The following morning Ainslie said he was going to look for a site for our homestead. I stayed behind and organized our belongings, making sure nothing ate the seedlings we'd purchased in Chatham and that they remained watered. There was a sort of path up from the beach, and Ainslie disappeared quickly into the brush. His plan was to find a place close to the natural spring up near Asilo de la Paz so we wouldn't have to walk too far for water. He would go up high and then follow a game trail to a likely place. We wanted to be
arriba
because there was more water and therefore an environment more hospitable for growing plants. The Jiménezes were up there as well, though they made it clear they didn't want us too near them, and the feeling was mutual. Genevieve and Victor were lower down, not far from Black Beach (not far by Galápagos standards, about an hour's walk). They had taken over the ruins of a Norwegian fishing camp and were living off provisions they'd brought as well as fruit from the trees that someone had fortuitously planted years ago.

Ainslie came back to the beach just as the sun was getting ready to disappear. “I found us a lovely place, bride-o'-mine. Flat, lush, got the shade of a couple of trees for the house and a nice place for the garden. Tomorrow we can make our way up there.”

I had started a fire with three of our precious matches. Training had taught me the saying “one match, one fire” but not how to achieve it. The beans were almost done, cooked with salt water and the rest of the beef jerky shredded. Ainslie paced the fire as though activity would make dinner cook faster. We ate, and then, exhausted, fell into “bed.”

The next morning, Ainslie took a load up to the site and then went to borrow the Jiménezes' burro. It was as stubborn as its cousin the mule and wore an expression of bemused displeasure constantly. “He stares at me like I owe him money,” Ainslie said.

We loaded him up (Chuclu was his name, I remember now) with the most necessary items in our camp—the oil drum with the radio, the seedlings, our bedroll ponchos. We walked for about an hour on the only road, the Camino de la Muerte (Highway of Death), the sun beating down on us. The land was so dry it was desert, the bushes not much more than sticks. And then it appeared someone had drawn a demarcation line; it began to get more lush until after about another half hour we were walking in the tropics. The ground was spongy, tangled with brambles, bushes, leaves, and shrubbery all vying for light under the canopy, growing on top of their fallen comrades. I had to pick my way carefully as their thorny grip threatened to trip me. The occasional lava boulders were now covered in a blanket of pale blue moss and overhead the sky was green with leaves. The air smelled of peaty decay, wet grass, and our own sweat. I was amazed that the landscape could change that quickly, and I later learned that this kind of variation is typical of the Galápagos Islands: If you don't like the scenery, walk three miles.

Ainslie's scouting skills were developed from childhood, and he left the main trail at a place only he would recognize. After another half hour uphill, I was completely winded. Never particularly hardy, I had atrophied during the weeks at sea.

“Just a bit more,” Ainslie said. “It'll be worth it.”

I had no choice but to forge ahead. Ainslie had indeed picked a lovely spot, verdant and well located. We could see just a hint of sea, enough to spot an approaching ship, and we were equidistant to both Black Beach and Post Office Bay.

“Why don't you wait here?” Ainslie said. “I'll make another trip.” I took him up on the offer, gratefully.

It was so quiet. Far from the sea, the noise of crashing waves didn't drown out all that surrounded it. Instead I could hear birds chatting with each other, the wind brushing the hair of the tall grass. There were other noises too, benign animal noise, or noises that the land makes, in much the same way a house will clear its throat and sigh at night.

That night we slept beneath our new stars. It was a promising start.

One of our first tasks was to get the radio up and running. Ainslie spent two days scouting sites, then was gone an entire day machete-ing his way up and back to his chosen hiding spot.

“Why don't you tell me where it is?” I said. “That way, if I ever need to use it, I'll know.”

“That's not protocol,” Ainslie said. “That makes you vulnerable, as you well know. And you don't know how to use it.” He sat down and began to take off his shoes, groaning when he had to bend over.

“Yes, but aren't these circumstances in which it might be wise to eschew protocol?” I knelt, pushing his hands away, and untied his shoes for him, slipping them off his hot feet.

“Oh thank you. I'm career military. You're asking me to not follow protocol?” Ainslie took a long drink from the jug on the table. “Not going to happen, pet.”

“I'm worried,” I said. “What if something happens to you?”

“First of all, nothing is going to happen to me. And second, if it does, then everyone will take care of you and the next ship will take you back to the mainland. Go to the embassy there and they'll get you home.”

“I don't like it,” I said.

“It's the navy,” Ainslie said. “You're not supposed to
like
it.” He stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. When he was done talking, he was done talking. I was fuming, and I took it out on our one poor pot.