The Pirate's Daughter (41 page)

Andrea was quiet, then she leaned back on her heels and looked up at him, and there was a flush to her cheeks.

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “You've got to promise not to laugh.”

“O.K.,” Wilson said.

“I've dated, of course, even lived with this painter for a few months, but there was no one that touched my heart like you. You were a little lost, maybe, but you were kind, gentle. Can I say that? I
found out on my own that gentle people are rare in the world. I always thought we were sort of fated to be together. I guess I was wrong.”

Wilson cleared his throat. He started to speak, then shook his head. “Leaving you the way I did was rotten,” he managed at last. “And I want to apologize. I thought about you off and on the whole time I was away. Didn't really realize how much I missed you until I got back to the city a couple of months ago. That's the truth. We used to have a nice, comfortable life together. Took me going halfway around the world to realize how good it was. I'm sorry I wrecked things.”

“I'd like to kiss you,” Andrea said quietly. “Is that all right with you?

Wilson felt his ears burning. She crawled around the glass-topped coffee table on her hands and knees and reached up for him and put her hand on his face. Her fingers smelled like orange juice. He remembered her lips when she kissed him.

A year passed.

Wilson wanted to forget everything he knew about Cricket and Africa, then suddenly he wanted to remember every detail. This was just about the time news of the British attack on Quatre Sables leaked to the press. Wilson turned on the television one Wednesday evening and saw Acting Captain Worthington on CNN from London: Worthington and a few of the officers of the
Gadfly
had been cashiered out of the navy for their roles in the affair, but the true extent of the slaving operations at Quatre Sables had become known, and there was a public outcry, and the men were recalled to duty. Worthington and Lieutenant Peavy, the newscaster said, had
just been awarded the Navy Cross and were going to be reassigned to a Blockade Squadron expanded to six ships of the line.

Wilson turned off the television set after the report, a tingling like electric currents running through his body. He took out a sheet of white paper and a fountain pen and wrote the following sentence: “Many strange stories have come out of the civil war in Bupanda; this is one of them,” and he kept writing all night and by morning had sixty-five pages. He stopped doing temporary office work and borrowed money from Andrea and locked himself in his apartment for the next four months and wrote a book about what had happened to him in Africa, as his famous ancestor had done. The book—
To the Dark Continent: An Account of My Experiences with the Pirates and Slavers of the Brotherhood of the Coast, Including Details of a Journey from the Sea to Lake Tsuwanga and Back Again
—made the
New York Times
Best Sellers list and was optioned by TrueSteel Pictures in Hollywood for a small fortune.

Though Wilson was wary of stepping over the broom a second time, his success left him little choice. He married Andrea the following June. With the money from the book and a good piece of Andrea's savings, they bought a restored farmhouse in Warinocco County about fifty miles north of the city, on a rise with a good view of the Potswahnamee's dark waters. The old place had been built in 1790 of sturdy fieldstone, and its six and a half beamceilinged bedrooms, Andrea said, promised plenty of room for a big family. Soon, there were horses in the old stables, a few fields planted with winter corn, and the cool leafy evenings of early fall, frost on the grass in the morning. Andrea set up a studio in the converted barn; Wilson was asked to teach a course on Africa at Jerome Martin Community College and afterward accepted the chairmanship of the International Committee for a United Bupanda, or ICUB, which seeks to put an end to the exploitation of that unhappy nation, where—alas!—the war continues.

After about a year of this settled life, one morning in mid-November, Wilson went out to the mailbox on the main road and found an unusual letter included with the usual junk mail and business correspondence. This letter, forwarded to him from his publisher, came in a thin envelope of coarse blue paper, torn at the edges and covered with a half dozen colorful stamps from the Republic of Madagascar, that odd paramecium-shaped island floating in the Indian Ocean off the southeast African coast. There was no return address.

A cold rain fell on the stubble fields as Wilson spread the mail across the kitchen table in the farmhouse, his heart beating. He took the blue letter and turned it over in his hands. The faucet dripped portentously in the sink behind him. The old house creaked in the wind. A pleasant yellow light came from the window of Andrea's studio in the barn. Wilson slit the envelope with a kitchen knife. As his heart had told him, the letter was from Cricket. Also enclosed was a small photo-booth photo of Cricket holding on her lap a young boy, roughly four years old. The child, as was plain to see, had Wilson's nose and mouth, Cricket's green eyes and high cheekbones and mop of coppery hair. The rain picked up on the old slate roof and the attic began to leak as Wilson squinted at Cricket's crabbed, obscure handwriting:

Tananarive, 16 May

Dear Wilson
,

I saw your book at Battingly and Sons, the English bookshop in Nairobi, last week. I didn't buy it, I don't want to read the thing. But I made note of the publisher and hope they will forward this letter to you because I have some interesting news. You have a son, who I named Elzevir after my father
and my ancestor, the great pirate. He was born on March 3, about nine months from the night we made love aboard the
Dread
on Lake Tsuwanga. I was pregnant when you marooned me on that miserable sandbar, though I didn't know it at the time
.

The boy is wonderful and strong and looks just like you. He has your mannerisms, despite the fact he has never seen you—and I'm also afraid he has your scruples. But he has a lot of years ahead, and we will make a proper little pirate out of him yet. I want you to understand this not to hurt you but to let you know that despite your treachery, our way of life continues. A half dozen of our ships were at sea when the British attacked—six captains and five hundred men. We have founded a new colony somewhere in the vicinity of Madagascar—obviously I'm not going to tell you where—and more join every day to serve under the good old skull and crossbones. You always loved order and the dull charms of middle-class life. I never did. The only way to stand that kind of existence is to swallow so much Prozac you don't feel your own rage and hope. I prefer fire and the sword, so to speak, and always a sail on the horizon
.

Still, having said all that, I want you to know that I do miss you and—call me crazy—would like to see you again someday. And I would like you to see your son. Three months out of the year, during the rainy season I am in Paris, usually starting April 1. I bought that gloomy apartment on the Ile St.-Louis, and there is plenty of space for you and your books there. You may contact me through my lawyer anytime: M. Gustave Leconte, 8bis Rue Lamartine, Paris 00017 FRANCE. Think about it
.

Love, Cricket

P.S. Remember that mark on your shoulder? According to the Articles of Brotherhood and according to my heart, it means you are mine forever. XOXO—C
.

Wilson read Cricket's letter four times, and he studied the photograph obsessively for half an hour. His hands were trembling, his neck was cold with sweat, and suddenly there was a slight briny
smell in his nostrils and he closed his eyes and saw the green waves crashing against the side of a ship, the horizon wild with storm, the black flag flying like a curse from the topgallants as a pirate wind rose out of the south. He shook himself away from this vision and went out into the yard and stood there till he was good and soaked and he could smell the wet earth and the horses in the stables and all thoughts of Cricket and the sea had been washed from him by a clean, forgiving rain.

Wilson did not go to Paris that year. He did not go the year after. True, some nights, sleeping next to his wife in bed beneath the beamed ceiling of the farmhouse, he awoke from a dream of Cricket's skin against his own, and it took the entire force of his will to keep him there, to keep him from the midnight roads of Warinocco County, from the airport and the next flight across the Atlantic to Paris, and thence the wilds of Madagascar. Still, he did not go—it is almost certain he will never go—but who can say?

The wheels grind on; the future remains uncertain.