Читать книгу Once, Two Islands - Dawn Garisch - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Two islands, covered by mosses, fungi and ferns, by grasses and shrubs and stunted trees all set at the angle of the prevailing wind, and cultivated with potatoes, carrots, turnips and pumpkin, also a grove of apple trees. Two islands populated by three hundred and sixty-seven inhabitants, all of them living on Ergo (the population stable with the birth of one, death of another), the majority of the employable adults working at the crayfish and fish factory owned by Jerome Peters. Only seven surnames (not including those belonging to Doctor Prosper or Minister Kohler, who were still considered mainlanders): Peters, Bagonata, Bardelli, Schoones, Pelani, Mobara and Tamara. Four fisherman’s cottages on Impossible Island, eighty-three buildings on Ergo, including cottages, the schoolhouse, the mayor’s office, the community hall, the shop, the church, the tavern, the lighthouse, the dairy and the co-op. All of them – except the hospital, the boat sheds, the police station and the factory – built of hewn volcanic rock and salvaged pieces of shipwreck and topped by toupees of thatch made from island grasses. Eighteen fishing boats kept in Ergo’s harbour, twelve kilometres of gravel track in the village and a half-kilometre track to the fields. One hundred and eighty head of sheep, three donkeys for the carts, numerous fowl (chickens, ducks, geese and peacocks), forty-two dogs and an unknown number of cats and cattle, some feral. Seventy-five graves set close together like a rosary round the church – the departed need their space, but not at the expense of the living. Only three graves left, up to two deaths a year.

And now another, unexpected. Officer Dorado Bardelli heard the news that morning from Liesa Pelani, who came over to the office. Dorado received the words released from Liesa’s lips as though they were any other; it was only once she had closed the door on the departing messenger that she felt the dragging pain. She leaned against her desk, shocked, letting tears well and fill her eyes. She had been at school with Angelique; they had played house-house together, and nurse-nurse, and skipping games. Angelique had always been the patient, dying of some terrible illness, and Dorado would take her temperature with a stick under her tongue and listen with her ear to her flat chest to hear the bumping of her heart and the tide of her breath. She would boil up leaves for medicine and Angelique would refuse to take it, saying she didn’t know what was in it; and so Dorado would decree that Angelique was dead, and she would play along, holding her breath and getting floppy. Dorado would run and call the doctor, Roland Kohler, who would come and save Angelique in the nick of time. Then she and Roland would get married and Angelique would cry and feel left out. But Roland had grown up and had left for the mainland and Dorado had fallen in love with Clarence, the mayor, a man already taken. Angelique was the one who had married a doctor; there should have been some insurance in that, but now they said she was dead. Dorado needed to see Angelique dead before she believed it. Perhaps she was just pretending.

She knew Clarence would arrive soon, in his all-weather gear and his agitation. She went to the mirror fastened to the wall over the hand basin and dabbed at her eyes. She must be strong for him, she must steady her hair, which was all over the place again. She would tie it back, braid it, force it into submission, except that it helped to obscure her ugly face. Things would only go from bad to worse now she was getting older. Why had the pretty one been taken away? She screwed her features into a knot, then stretched them wide open over the bones of her face. Clarence had confided his private theory to Dorado: that facial exercises done daily kept the skin flexible and firm and prevented the sagging of flesh, the dewlaps and the jowls from developing. It was ridiculous, wept Dorado, her face going gargoyle as she dragged her hairbrush through the dark thicket on her head. She mopped at her eyes again, wondering whether his wife knew, or whether his little vanity was their secret.

She heard Clarence’s car drive up. She pulled her jacket down sharply over her behind, put on her best face and opened the door to him. He gusted in, dripping, hardly noticing her, already saying something, his arms punctuating his meaning with forceful gestures. She wanted to quieten him, to take him in her arms to reassure them both. But there were eyes all around – the office window looked clear out onto the road – so she busied herself, making him a strong cup of tea. Later, perhaps that evening when the fuss had died down, she could take him to her.

“It’s an act of God,” he declared. “I’ve called a council meeting at eleven. It’s our duty, Dorado, to rescue the doctor from gossip and superstition. Orion Prosper has cured us all of something or other over the years!” He brought himself up in front of the mirror, and looked into it critically. “Jerome can make a sensible announcement in the factory cafeteria, and Minister Kohler can set the villagers’ minds straight on Sunday.” He turned and looked at Dorado for her response. She agreed encouragingly. Her tears had abandoned her. She was up for anything.

“We must go round to the doctor’s house,” Clarence decided. “Express condolences, a public display of solidarity.” He looked at his hands, at the soft pulp of them. “It’s so difficult, death. Awkward.” He frisked his pockets, found his cigarettes and lit up. “You’ll come with me?”

Dorado got ready, pulling on her all-weather gear, pleased to see Clarence relax a little. He touched her cheek softly. “You always know what to say, after the obvious.”

Dorado and the mayor went out, pushing through the storm to the police vehicle parked beside the flagpole, on which the chivvying wind was playing the strings allegro: ting-ting. The officer paused a moment to wrestle with the loops in her thick gloves, lowering the flag to half-mast; there it wrenched about, threatening to tear away into the sky.