Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez
the chance to see her one day. She cheeks pink, pink, like a rose. But I never did see her in she bathing suit. If only . . .”
It was too much for him. The body of Her Royal Highness exposed to the lecherous fantasies of a common boatman! Mumsford cut him off. “How much farther?” he barked.
But if the boatman had been hurt by Mumsford’s rebuff, he soon got his revenge. They were now entering the tail end of the third boca on the approach to Rust’s Bay in Chacachacare. Waves swelled and fell in quick succession like the folds of a fan. Mumsford clutched his seat. “Hold on tight!” the boatman called out to him. The boat rose high in the air and then slapped down hard on the water. Mumsford lurched forward.
“Hold up your back!” the boatman shouted. Before Mumsford could respond, he was walking toward him. “Yes, just so,” the boatman said, and passed him, making his way to the helm of the boat. “See, I can stand up because I accustom.” He spread out his arms and legs, balancing himself perfectly though the boat pitched up and down, flinging long sprays of water at them, almost blinding Mumsford. “This is nothing. We do this all the time. I know how it bad for you people from the big countries,” he yelled over the loud thudding sounds of the hull hitting the water. “Is just a little rough passage. We go pass it soon. Don’t be frighten. Is a little thing.”
The nerves at the ends of Mumsford’s fingers were still tingling, his stomach still churning, when the boat reached calmer waters, close to the right prong of the horseshoe that was the island of Chacachacare. His face was scorched, and in spite of the seawater that had soaked his jacket, he was hot, sweaty. Only after the boat rounded the bend and a pleasant assortment of pink and ivory angles appeared at the edge of the sea, nestled in the forest of trees that fanned up an incline, did the tightness in his jaw begin to loosen.
It was the A-framed structure, with wings behind it, on top of another floor with a covered veranda, that calmed him. For suddenly in front of him were not the contours of a tropical house but of a Swiss chalet. Snow, an icy wind blowing through pine trees were what he was thinking of when he took out his handkerchief and dried the perspiration that had gathered on his brow.
“Dr. Gardner’s house, one presumes,” he said to the boatman, and allowed himself a faint smile. But the boatman said no, it was not Dr. Gardner’s house. It was the real doctor’s house.
“Real?”
“The doctor who see about the lepers.”
Disappointment brought the stiffness back in Mumsford’s jaw.
Misinterpreting the change in Mumsford’s face, the boatman added quickly, “Maybe you see him another day. He don’t always be here. He come to the island now and then to give the lepers they medicine. If you want to see him, maybe you come another time.”
Mumsford bit his lip. The house was still as a grave. As they drew nearer, it seemed all but abandoned. The pretty pink that had caught his eyes was in fact rust. The entire galvanized roof, apparently neglected for years in the sun and rain, was stained with it. In parts the rust had turned bright orange, in some places a pale pink. Close up he saw that the ivory ripples below the roof were wood slats that were spotted and scraped, in need of fresh paint. The whitewash on the concrete walls on the bottom floor was recent but it barely camouflaged the places where the concrete had begun to crumble. The wooden shutters and doors were closed. Here and there Mumsford could make out where a shutter was broken, a slat dangled from a nail. Weeds and thin patches of high grass sprouted between the dirt and stones near the concrete pillars that held up the house. The only sign of life, if it could be called a sign of life, was a brown burlap hammock on the veranda swinging listlessly in the slight breeze. Someone had strung one end to a nail on the wall of the house and the other to one of the four unpainted wood poles that supported the rusty galvanized roof covering the veranda. But there was nothing, no other trace, not a piece of clothing, not a piece of paper, not a kitchen utensil, to indicate the existence of that someone.
He was in the Land of the Dead. There were no rivers, no ponds, no freshwater anywhere on the island, the commissioner had told him. No water except what one chanced to collect when it rained.
“And the lepers?” A chill ran up his spine.
“Not to worry. They never come here. They on the other side. ’Rond the bend. They can’t see you from this side.”
“And Dr. Gardner?” It was an effort to keep his fear from affecting his voice.
“Up yonder,” the boatman said, pointing to the distance beyond the doctor’s house. “Way behind there.”
All Mumsford could see was a thick nest of trees and interlocking branches. His eyebrows converged.
“It have a road,” the boatman said sympathetically. “You get there easy.”
But no road was in sight when the boatman steered the boat to the low stone wall that separated the doctor’s house from the sea, and once on land, on the pebbled dirt yard that bordered the doctor’s house (for there was no beach), what the boatman led him to was not a road but a dirt track, bounded on either side by bushes thinned out by the sun and entwined with vines whose brown stems were as thick as rope. Stiff dried branches stuck out across the dirt track and poked his legs.
“You lucky is the dry season,” the boatman said, “or you need cutlass to pass here. The bush thick when it rain.”
Mumsford asked him about snakes. In the dry season they crawled close to houses looking for water.
“Only horsewhip,” the boatman said.
“Horsewhip? Is it poisonous?”
“We does call it horsewhip because . . .”
Lines of sweat were trickling down Mumsford’s forehead into his eyes. He lost his patience. “For God’s sake, man.” He swiped his hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to know why you call it horsewhip. I want to know if it is poisonous. Can you answer that simple question?”
“Everybody from England does want to know,” the boatman said defensively.
“I want to know if it is poisonous. Can you tell me that? ” Mumsford had moved to the middle of the dirt track, far from the edge of the bushes, and was examining the area around him.
“Is a thin, thin, green snake. Like a whip. Just sting you when it whip you. It don’t kill.”
Not poisonous. But Mumsford had no chance to savor his relief. Just when he felt the tension ease from his shoulders, the boatman reached between his belt and the waistband of his shorts and pulled out his machete.
“What?” Mumsford drew in his breath.
“Iguana,” he said, peering into the bushes. “They big like little dragon here.”
For Mumsford the trip on foot to Dr. Gardner’s house was a nightmare. His heart raced, beads of sweat collected dust on his top lip and down the sides of his bright red cheeks. He clutched his briefcase close to his chest.
“Carry that for you?” the boatman offered.
But for Mumsford the briefcase was a lifeline. It was England in a world shot backward to the heart of darkness.
Then suddenly it all changed. Then suddenly, at the end of the path where the bushes had grown wild, though now, in the dry season, were almost leafless and brown, was a meadow, a field of green stretching before him. And at the end of the field of green was a blaze of color, and behind it a white house with eaves and alcoves and large baskets of luscious green ferns hanging from the ceiling to the railings on a glorious porch.
“Dr. Gardner.” The boatman stopped. He waved his machete in the direction of the house. “Is here he live. I come back for you here. In an hour.”
It was frightening, too, all that green. Never had he seen such green, never on any lawn he knew, never even in England. For it was not simply green, it was brilliantly green. Plastic, artificially, brilliantly green. As he walked along the paved path that led to the house,