23
On the rim of the Rano Raraku crater, Max tells Elsa about the war. News of the archduke’s assassination and the Austro-Hungarian declaration of war reached him in China and for months his Tsingtao fleet has been trying to make its way back to Germany. Pagan, Ponape, Eniwetok, Majuro, Samoa, Tahiti, Christmas Island—they have already zigzagged through eight thousand miles of ocean. “Eight ships, steaming beneath a constant cloud of black smoke, wholly undetected by the Allied patrols,” says Max, looking down into the crater at the scores of half-carved stone faces. At Fanning Island they blasted the cable station. On Bora Bora, they claimed to be French, flying French flags and painting over the ships’ names. Max details each anchorage, each brush with danger. After being so long in the company of only his officers, he seems elated to speak freely, to express some small astonishment, and perhaps fear, at finding himself in the middle of a war sweeping all of Europe. He is nothing like the man Elsa remembers from Strasbourg, the man who sat on that bench with such composure while she talked about Alice.
“But you, Elsa, you have been here how long? This island. It must be strange for you.”
“Strange, yes . . .“For two years, her life has consisted only of this island—Alice and Edward, Te Haha and Biscuit Tin, the mysterious script, the language. For two years, she has been immersed in novelty, riding a steady current of the unfamiliar. And now looking at Max feels out of place.
“Elsa, are you unwell?”
“I’ll be all right. I—I never expected to see you again.”
“You are not . . .unhappy with it?”
“Simply adjusting.”
“But you have thought of me?”
“Of course.” But she has not thought of him as she had expected she would. And an awareness comes to her that she has supplanted him, and not with Edward, but with her work. As if her research into the island’s past has somehow removed her from her own past. As if the past were simply a quality to which she was bound, a suitcase she was obligated to carry, but which could be filled with anything. Her own disappointments swapped for the demise of a civilization.
“You are even lovelier.”
“I think you’ve been looking at your officers too long.”
“Is that . . . yes, I think it is. The hint of a smile?”
“Max.” Something in her flutters open, and Elsa reaches out to gently touch his hand. How very odd that she can see herself, three years earlier, in Strasbourg, seated beside him on that garden bench, shielded by hedges and bushes, in that small patch of the world they made their own. Max in a brown day suit, smoking his pipe, explaining to her the various flower species in the garden, their natural habitats, noting how the beaks of the hummingbirds fit perfectly within the long petals of the fuchsias.
A cold breeze chills her face. “It’s getting late,” she says, standing.
“Elsa.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Come tomorrow. Come to the harbor where we are anchored. Please. We will talk some more. You will tell me all about your tablets and statues. And, if you like, about your husband.”
She climbs onto her pony. As Max hands her the lantern, she is struck by an impossible notion. “You’re not here . . . because ofme ?”
“I knew you were here.”
“But . . .” She doesn’t know what she means.
“We came from China across the entire Pacific, stopping at a half-dozen islands along the way. We needed to gather our forces. And you were on an island. In the South Pacific. You were on this one,Liebling . I could not very well decide to coal at Juan Fernández instead.”
“I can’t believe I’m looking at you.Here. ”
“You need rest, Elsa. It’s late. But come tomorrow.” He glances over his shoulder, down the darkening slope, and whistles sharply. A heavy cantering tears through the silence and an officer on horseback appears, halting in a salute. Once again, sternness hardens Max’s face. Like magnets, his shiny black boots draw together. His hand cuts a salute.
“Elsa.” He turns to her and clasps her arms. “You realize, of course . . . you must say nothing about the war, to anyone.” He lowers his voice. “Anyone.”
She knows, above all, he means she isn’t to tell Edward. “Nicht,” she says, and rides off back to camp behind the silent officer.
The next morning, she tells Edward the squadron has requested her help.
“They’re certainly not shy about making their needs clear.” Edward is steeping a cup of tea, raising and plunging the silver globe. They have depleted most of their tea supply, and now brew with only a pinch of leaves, trying to drain every last bit of flavor.
“They want to purchase livestock,” says Elsa. “It’s best I talk to the islanders. So there’s no confusion over payment.”
“Yes. Better to assist them. Still no sign of newspapers?”
“I’ll try again today.”
“For all the help they’re asking, you would expect they would offer something in return.”
“You would expect.”
“It occurred to me,” Edward begins, sliding the cup of tea across the table to Elsa. “Their interest in the tablets”—he lifts the pot from the meager fire and pours the steaming water into another cup—“was unusually extreme.” He plunges the globe in, stirring contemplatively. “It might not be prudent to show the Germans your work on the translations.”
“Edward.”
“You cannot say their behavior wasn’t odd.”
Max’s behavior would, of course, seem suspicious to Edward.
“I realize, Elsa, that my maritime experience has been in the sporting class. But even so. There are priorities when one anchors, a certain hierarchy for what one attends to. Wooden tablets? No. I should hate to see your work, our work, revealed by others. And in the event that they’re interested in photographing themoai, I think it best I hide the excavation work.”
To argue that Max’s behavior was normal seems pointless.
“The safest place is the schooner,” says Edward. “I can have the boat cleaned and brought around here to load. They won’t see a thing. I think it best we move your journals there as well.”
“Of course.”
There is a yelp from Alice’s tent, and then the words “Bad Pudding.”
Edward takes a long sip of his tea. “I want you to know that I have set things down for her. I have explained, in detail, the rules for our relationship. Physicality, of any sort, has been forbidden. Kissing, fondling. She understands it is entirely out of the question. She was quite distressed. She’s angry with me. Feels I’ve . . . rejected her. And I think it’s best that for now I stay distant.”
“Whatever you think is best,” says Elsa, rising from the table. “I’ll see she’s all right.”
“She may not want to see you, either.”
“Alice and I had our difficulties long before you came into our life. We’ve fought before. It will be fine. She will be fine.”
But in the tent Alice turns from Elsa.
“Allie. You can’t stay cross like this forever.”
“Pudding,” says Alice. “Don’t be cross.”
“Allie, look at me. Talk to me.”
“Pudding is always talked to.”
“Allie, I’m going to Vinapu. Do you want to come?”
Alice releases a huff. “Vinapu. Vinapu. Vinapu.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’ll come to see you later, when I’m back,” says Elsa.
“Pudding never gets to go to Vinapu.”
Elsa approaches her from behind, and tentatively kisses Alice’s head; Alice sits perfectly still.
“I won’t be long,” says Elsa. “I’ll see you and Pudding in a little while.”
Elsa closes the flap of the tent and calls to Edward, “She’s fine. She just wants to rest for a while.” Then Elsa sets out on the southern coast toward the harbor.
Along the path, the sour smell of burning coal fills the air. She hears the clanging of chains and cables, the rumble of engines, voices rising and falling in waves of German song. Then, mounting the cliff above the harbor at Vinapu, she sees on the water below eight gray vessels. But for the commotion all around them—derricks dripping with cords and lines, wobbly dinghies clogged with sunburned men making slowly for the shore—the ships have the look of vast strips of dead metal. On the side of the largest ship, colliers toss baskets of coal into a row of square bunkers, chanting,Wem Gott will rechte Gunst erweisen.
Elsa tethers her pony and edges down the path to the bay, where dinghies, pinnaces, and Rapa Nui canoes clutter the shore. A small supply ship has been almost run aground, lashed to the jetty with ropes and chains. A pyramid of blistering wooden barrels tops its deck. Crates rise in a tower. On the rocks, several yards away, dozens of bulging, sap-stained burlap sacks spill yams, pineapples, and pumpkins. A young officer is tugging one bag at a time across the rocks while trying to smoke with his free hand.
He sees Elsa coming down the path and blows a bored plume of smoke toward the sun. “Von Spee? Ja?”
“Ja,” says Elsa.
He drops his sack and leads her to a small motorboat. He flicks away his cigarette and tugs the engine to a coughing start. Elsa watches the shore recede behind them, realizing this is the first time in two years she has left the island. They soon pull alongside the largest of the warships, a vast wall of studded metal rising above them. All along the wall, rope ladders dangle like vines, and at a metal ladder, the officer cuts the engine. He stands and extends his hand, gesturing to Elsa and then to the ladder. “Ja?” She nods. Wrapping her skirt around one wrist, she climbs, her boots clanging against each rung. At the vast expanse of the main deck, chimneys and derricks rise all around her, between them a web of taut wires, like a colossal game of cat’s cradle. She walks along the deck, trying to picture the boat at sea, cutting through frothing waves, abuzz with hundreds of men shouting orders, grabbing lines, taking positions. And guns. They would of course be firing guns and cannons. And would they not, then, also be fired upon?
“Hallo! Hallo!”From belowdecks comes a smiling officer, his white uniform bright in the sun.
“Ich suche Admiral von Spee?” she asks.
At her words, his face, tanned and fleshy, fills with delight. He strides forward and leads her down a ladder, through a labyrinth of narrow corridors lit by naked bulbs. At a black door with gold insignia, the officer delivers four swift knocks. Just before the door opens, he bows to Elsa and whisks his arm into a slow, gallant arc. But as the handle unlatches, he offers a full, sharp salute just as the face of the admiral emerges.
“Max, this is a floating . . . city.”
“Weg,” commands Max. The officer turns, departs.
Max rests his hand on Elsa’s shoulder. “You made it. And you look rested.”
“Where is everybody?”
“Shore leave. It has been a long time at sea for them. Come in, sit down.”
She follows him into the small cabin. Maps and charts spill from a table beneath the porthole, but the room is otherwise spare. She sits down on a cushioned bench, what might be a sofa or a bed.
“I must confess, I imagined you living in a bit more luxury.”
“You should have seen her at Tsingtao. Carpets, paintings, French tapestries. The deck done up with awnings for dances. This cabin had wood paneling. I have had my share of luxury.”
“And you redecorated?”
“Everything flammable . . . we left in China.”
Flammable. Again the image rises before her of the ship firing its cannons, smoke clouding the decks. She stands and looks out the porthole, toward the shore. “The islanders will be visiting you. Their canoes are out. They enjoy sneaking up on people.”
“They’ve come by already. We gave them some soaps and tinned meats, though we have little to spare. It’s costly, this peacetime charade.”
“This will go down in Rapa Nui history, you know. They don’t get many visitors.”
“So long as it does not go out on the wireless.”
“There’s no wireless—”
“I know.”
She turns now to face him, and his eyes meet hers with solemnity. “They are looking for us, Elsa. The British.”
“Thank goodness the ocean is so large.”
“Germany is thousands of miles away.Thousands of miles.”
She looks at the charts spread on the table and rolls back the edges of one, then another. “How long can you anchor here?”
“Not more than a few days. We are awaiting one more ship.”
What can she possibly say to him? Don’t leave? She imagines the plea rising in waves over the whole of Europe at that very moment. She knows its futility, its na?veté.
“Well—” He breaks the silence. “Now you see what I do when I am not leading the children through the forest.”
Elsa drops the charts. “And now you know what I’ve done since I stopped running around after your children.”
“He is much older than I envisioned.”
“Hah! You’re not one to speak.”
“Oh, no. Have I aged?”
“Everyone looks older with a battleship.”
But as swiftly as their playfulness swells, it subsides. A bird flapping briefly through the room and out the window.
“It is serious, isn’t it?” says Elsa.
“Yes,Liebling. ”
“And you’re in real danger.”
He takes her hand. “There are almost two thousand men in this fleet. Most of them younger than you. At Samoa, they went ashore, they flirted with the women, they drank, and then they wrote, as they have always done, on the tree trunks and the large rocks.Fritz was here, 1914, Sailor on the Scharnhorst. Before we left we sent another party to scratch everything out, all their names, the marks they had wanted to leave.” He pauses. “They are hunting us.”
She understands now what he is trying to tell her but can’t say: He cannot make it home. The odds are impossible. And that is why he has come.
“Tell me, Elsa. What thoughts are in your mind?”
She is thinking of his ship being stripped of all its wood, all its fabrics. She is thinking of the ship aflame. “England,” she says. “My father’s house. I would like to see it again.”
“Yes,” he says. “I, too, dream of home. Strasbourg.”
“The garden.”
“The garden,” he sighs. “Your sister is here, is she not? Alice?”
“Alice.”
“Is she well?”
“Well? Yes. But different.”
Elsa steps to the porthole, Max following, and they look through the glass toward the shore, toward the cliffs, the parched grass, and fallen statues. How small it all seems from here.
“It is an odd thing, this landscape,” he says. “It’s not what we have seen on other islands. I’ve never seen an island with so little.”
“What have you seen? On the other islands?”
“Breadfruit trees and coconut palms. Turtles and tropical birds. The other islands are like jungles.”
“I think this was as well, and then something happened.”
“What?”
“It has to do with themoai, how they were moved, and why they are like that, fallen on their faces.”
“They are like tombs, those statues,” says Max.
“They are tombs,” she says. “Those platforms they stood on, people were buried beneath them. The statues are symbols of the dead. Ancestors. And I don’t think they fell. There are stories on those wooden tablets. Histories of this island. This place was once covered with a forest. It could be just legend, just folklore, but—”
“Tell me.”
“You really want to hear it?”
“Why would I not?”
“It’s sad,” she says.
“Good,” replies Max. “Then we know it is true.”
For the next six days, Edward dismantles the excavation and moves thekohau, their notebooks, her journal with therongorongo translation, and theirmoai sketches—anything the Germans might make off with in the night—onto the schooner, which has been cleaned and brought around and is now anchored off Anakena once again. Elsa helps Max provision the ships. Beef, lamb, and chicken are bartered. She even helps several officers purchase wood carvings.
When finally she and Max say their good-byes, it is in his cabin. In silence, they sit beside each other, listening to the din of the anchor lines, the noise of the waves against the ship’s side. It is like the times they sat in the garden, except this past week there has been no need for propriety. As if to simply relieve the need to talk, Elsa kisses him, and soon she can feel his full weight, and in this weight his absence; already she can sense the moment when his body will be gone, feeling all at once his presence and its loss. And it is now, as she lies beneath him, that her mind returns to Edward’s house, when she stood looking at her trunk, wondering what lay ahead, as if she has, after a long journey, finally become that future self.
She pulls him toward her.
“Don’t cry,Liebling. ”
“I never cry,” she says. But she can feel a tear run from the corner of her eye.
When Max finally stands, she can no longer suppress the urge. “Don’t go.”
In the half-darkness, he smiles. “Finally. I wondered if you might not be trying to get rid of me.”
“Stay.”
“Impossible.”
“Then, when this is all over, we’ll see each other. You will come visit me in Hertfordshire. You’ll see our gardens in spring. You’ll tell me the name of everything in bloom.”
“Of course.”
“We can take the train to London and see the British Museum.”
“Absolutely. The museum.” He puts his arm around her and a look of pain washes over his face, a look she has never seen before. As though speaking to himself, his tone expressionless, he says: “Our lives will be filled with great bliss.”
“So they’re off, then?” asks Edward.
“Yes,” she mutters, remembering Max’s instructions. “They’re headed to Pitcairn to look around for several days, and then on to the Marquesas and Tahiti.” That is, in fact, where they have just come from. “It seems they’re on a grand tour.”
Now the reality of their departure hits her. Max is gone. The fleet is gone. They have returned to the ocean, where they will be tracked down. Elsa tries to remember what lies ahead: Kasimiro, yes, she must return to see Kasimiro. She must get her key. Max agreed that this was of great importance. The tablets, therongorongo. That, at least, is permanent.
“Alice has been upset,” he says nervously. “You’ll see she’s all right?”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. It is the same thing. The rules.”
“Has she needed to be reminded of the rules?” Her voice is testy. She does not want to return to this life, this confusion.
“I promise. I’ve made her understand.”
“All right.”
“You know, I still find it exceedingly odd that they hadn’t a single newspaper or magazine with them.”
“Perhaps Germans don’t like to read, Edward. Good night.” She lights one of the lanterns and carries it with her to Alice’s tent.
“Allie,” she whispers.
But the tent is empty. “Allie,” she calls again into the night. And then she sees the cage, Pudding’s cage, in the corner of the tent, its door flung open, a solitary gray feather resting on its floor.
The necklace of beans lies broken on the ground.
Her voice rises now, shrieks into the darkness: “Allie! Where are you?”