The Doctor and the Diva (27 page)

“I’m afraid my freedom is limited,” Ravell replied. “We’ve got the clearing of the land for cultivation under way. I can’t simply leave the Cocal.” The preparation of land for planting new palms was difficult; the old hardwoods were often enormous, entangled in creepers, and sometimes impossible to remove. He felt he should be present to supervise the undertaking.

Good-naturedly, Peter nodded. He adjusted his white mushroom helmet as they forged onward. With his usual optimism, he intended to return to his proposal and keep talking about it to Ravell throughout the day. He knew when to let a conversation fade and when to resume it, how to nudge a subject along, how to persuade. He counted himself as a man who could bend fate in ways that suited him.

That morning they entered a valley where the air flickered with “big blues”—a species of butterfly with a striking dark border, the ones known as Morphos. It startled the eye to see these large blue butterflies on the wing, for they moved erratically, yet swiftly. Such specimens were plentiful but not easy to nab with a net. If pursued, Morphos fled to the depths of the woods.

After a hard chase, Peter finally caught one, and he and Ravell fell, breathless, to the ground. The two men sat up and drew out a flask of hot kola and drank from it to celebrate, licking the chocolate flavor from their lips. They opened a bag and ate a fruit called pawpaws, which had a creamy flesh that tasted like bananas. Ravell repeated that he was sorry about not being able to get away.

“We wouldn’t be gone long,” Peter said. “Just as far into Venezuela as the capital, Bolívar. Just there and back. We’d be gone no more than ten days at most.”

Ravell shook his head. “I’m afraid such a journey would require at least a couple of weeks.” During his first year as manager of the plantation, Ravell believed that he owed it to his friend Hartley to work especially hard to increase revenues. Again he insisted that he could not afford to be absent.

As a businessman, Peter took keen interest in the figures Ravell shared with him. A thousand coconuts brought in fifteen dollars, and the Cocal produced five million coconuts per year. Three thousand new trees were being planted. If each tree, on average, grew sixty or seventy coconuts annually . . . Mentally Peter calculated the potential for increased earnings, and the numbers flew like sparks in his head.

It turned out to be a good day for butterflies. In the late morning Peter spotted a
Caligo,
with its distinctive eye mark under the fluttering wing. The most interesting sighting of all was an unnamed butterfly that clicked as it flew. When the “clicker” flattened itself against a tree trunk, Peter tiptoed closer to inspect its gray and blue marbled wings.

Around noon Peter said, “If you can’t get away, perhaps I ought to make the Orinoco expedition alone.”

“What about Erika?”

“Unless you have an objection, I thought she might stay at the coconut plantation. I could leave samples of my sperm. You could treat her as before.”

Ravell looked aghast. “You can’t leave your wife at the Cocal.”

“Why not?”

Ravell stared at the tip of his boot. Then he glanced up through the treetops and winced at the sun. “Because it wouldn’t be proper.”

“Who’s to notice? Munga? The other servants? You live miles from any sort of habitation.”

“I’ll send word to Mrs. Hartley that your wife requires a place to stay while you’re off exploring,” Ravell said.

Peter halted. He removed his white helmet and rubbed sweat from his forehead. As he shook his head vigorously, droplets of water swung from his matted hair. “Not at the Eden estate. Erika can’t bear to be there—she’d refuse to go back to the Hartleys’ place.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve got children. They’ve got a
baby
. Don’t you see?”

“Of course.” Ravell waved his words away in apology. “Most insensitive of me.”

Peter bent to observe an army of parasol ants. “Look at these,” he murmured. The ants had made a track that ran fifty yards through the grass. They’d formed two parallel lines. In one line, each ant carried a tiny leaf like a parasol on its head. A second line, moving in the reverse direction, headed from the nest toward the source of leaves. En route the ants had to cross a stream where a fallen tree branch bridged the water. One line of ants—the ones bearing the parasol leaves—followed the top of the fallen branch, while the returning ants traversed the log’s underside. Not a single ant experienced the least confusion. When Peter jabbed their nest with a stick, the warrior ants burst forth with their large nippers to counterattack. They bit his fingers—sharply.

“These warrior ants,” he remarked to Ravell, “have no job, except to attack.”

Ravell squatted to study them, his forearms braced against his thighs. He pointed. “Look how some of the ants dawdle. You see how the warriors act like policemen to push the slow ones along.”

When the two men came to a river, they settled near a cluster of calla lilies and ate their lunch.

“Maybe I’m superstitious,” Peter said, “but last time when I was away on a journey and we tried this—the artificial insemination—it worked very well.” A glow of hope came into his voice.

Ravell held a piece of mutton, but he stopped eating it then and wrapped up the remainder and put it away. “Peter,” he said, holding himself quite still for a moment. He turned to Peter and looked directly into his face.

“Peter,” he said again, with so much gravity that Peter half-expected the other man to grip him by the shoulders. “I was run out of Boston by men who don’t trust me with their wives.”

“Well, I have an entirely different opinion of you—obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. And I’m entrusting my wife and our fate to you.”

Ravell stood up. He looked around at the forest and blinked as though he felt lost.

“I feel more respect for you and more confidence in you than I can say,” Peter went on. “I’ve never had a brother, but if I did, I imagine that I’d feel the same closeness to him that I feel toward you.”

Ravell resumed his seat on the ground. Along the riverbank the trees were festooned with creepers. Some were partly submerged, and blue herons and white egrets sat upon their exposed roots. The two men spoke of ice.

“Ice is horribly expensive in these parts,” Ravell said. “It’s like gold here, you know.”

Ice would be required, as Peter well understood, if a man intended to refrigerate his own seed and leave some behind for his wife while he went off to explore.

“I’m not a poor man,” Peter said. “And I won’t be daunted.”

He noticed a curious thing then—a line of ants moving up Ravell’s back, along the other man’s suspenders. The ants disappeared inside Ravell’s white collar, and emerged, half-drowning in the sweat on Ravell’s neck.

Suddenly Peter felt the jungle crawling in his own underwear. He jumped up and grabbed his groin. The hairs on his legs were teeming with ants.

Ravell let out a curse.

They realized that they’d sat down in the middle of a nest of ants, too engrossed in their talk to have noticed. Peter heard himself yelling, laughing. As he yanked his white shirt over his head, a swarm of ants fell into his hair and crossed his scalp like moving flakes. When he blinked, ants caught in his eyelashes. Ants crawled into the whorls of his ears.

Beside him Ravell barked and swore and laughed, too. They slapped the backs of their necks and brushed their faces with handkerchiefs. They ripped off their boots and turned them upside down and shook them. They flung their boots at a boulder, then put the footwear back on again, both of them sprinting for the only thing that could save them now. They plunged in fast, the two of them, giving themselves up to the deepest part of the river.

They dined that evening in their pajamas. Two strangers on horseback arrived at the Cocal just as they were sitting down—travelers coming from Manzanilla in the north, bound for Mayaro. The visitors were in search of water. After Ravell filled their flasks, he invited the men to join in their meal. That was the custom in these parts: you furnished strangers with anything they might need—a meal, a bed, the loan of a horse.

One of the men, Smoot, was an experienced woodsman. Peter and Ravell planned to venture into the heart of the tropical forest the next day, and Smoot offered to come along.

Erika was bored—and restless—from staying in the house, so she insisted that she wanted to explore the far reaches of the forest with them. Smoot, who agreed to serve as their guide, did not approve. They would not get far, he felt, if a lady came along.

But Erika persisted. The next morning they outfitted her with a mushroom helmet and an old pair of Ravell’s trousers rolled up at the ankles. Munga brought a small coolie man’s boots and placed them at her feet.

They moved through the tropical forest in deliberate order, with Smoot in the lead, armed with his gun. All of them had cutlasses. For mile after mile, they raised their blades and hacked through creepers and vines, crossing a tropical forest floor that never quite dried. Very quickly they sank in mud up to their calves. To everyone’s surprise, it was not Erika who slipped first. That honor went to Ravell, who keeled over laughing, legs sprawling, into a thick pit of muck.

Why, Peter wondered, did Erika not feel the exhaustion? The woods exhilarated his wife—he could tell from the way she gazed upward, smiling at a scarlet ibis winging past. Her face shone as though rain had fallen, and her lips looked swollen in the heat. The men glanced at her, expecting her to wither or whine, but she trooped onward, seemingly tireless, less in need of periodic rests than they. Peter counted himself blessed to have the sort of wife who continued intrepidly.

A waterfall of orchids spilled from the immense trees and blocked their path
. Ah, the extravagance of nature!
Peter wanted to shout. Smoot lifted his cutlass to make a great killing swipe. “Don’t cut that!” Erika cried in protest. But she spoke too late. One minute a curtain of stunning orchids stretched before them, but by the next, it was gone.

For five miles they traveled by compass; they staggered and sliced their way. Thorns hung everywhere, some like needles, others curved like the tips of steel knives. At one point Smoot gave a yelp and ripped off his shoe. A sandbox tree thorn had pierced through Smoot’s leather sole and gone straight into his foot.

The compass and guesswork led them to a swamp, but it was too late to turn back, so they lunged forward in water and mud that filled their boots.

When at last they heard the sound of breakers not far off, Peter tore the helmet from his head, and the others did the same. When they reached the beach, Ravell opened coconuts for them to drink. Peter felt the sweetness flush through him as he swallowed. Smoot poured a coconut’s juice over his head.

After Smoot tossed the empty husk aside, he gave a hoot and ran toward the Atlantic and threw himself in, clothes and all. The other men followed. Erika, too, walked straight into the surf. After a moment she shot upward from the waves, her hair streaming over her face.

That evening they dined in their pajamas again. Erika came to the table in her peach silk dressing gown, her rinsed curls loose and damp.

While they ate, Peter knew the men were watching his wife. They stared at her as she lowered her eyes, plucked an oyster from its shell, and slipped it onto her tongue with her fingers. Smoot marveled aloud at Erika’s stamina. Ravell’s eyes rested too long on her.

Peter’s head filled with the fumes of his drink, and he was more pleased than anyone, because she was his, while the rest were half in love with her.

I will do anything to keep her,
he thought.
Anything.