The Doctor and the Diva (28 page)

A
groom arrived one day at dawn to drive Peter to Sangre Grande. From there he’d take a train to Port of Spain, where a steamer would carry him across to Venezuela and the Orinoco. In two weeks he would return, he said. After Peter’s departure, Erika lingered under pillows and sheets until late morning, afraid of herself, afraid of what might happen when she got up from the bed.

Ravell had been long gone from the house, she knew. He went to sleep early, and began his work by four or five. Hard rains had resumed—drenching, tropical bursts that beat the roof hard.

At midday she sat in the parlor writing letters to her father and her brother. By that hour Ravell had returned to the house and finished the late breakfast he always took at eleven in the morning. He entered the parlor dressed in a helmet and rubber rain gear, ready to go out again. He stepped toward her, his hands clasped respectfully behind his back.

“Peter told me that you’re menstruating.”

She nodded. She sealed her letter and moved to a rocking chair near the window that had been left open. The covered porch directly outside prevented any rain from soaking the sill, but the torrent could be clearly heard, the curtains stirred by intermittent breezes. It was pleasant to remain inside the house, protected from the downpour, and still feel the force of it.

“In Boston, what would you be doing on a rainy afternoon like this?” he asked. “Listening to Caruso singing ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ on your Victrola? It’s a pity that we haven’t got the magic of electricity here at the Cocal.”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“I worry that you’ll be bored here,” he said gently. “Perhaps in a few days—” He hesitated, knowing her feelings. “Maybe I’ll have my overseer, Gibbs, put you on a train, and you can visit Mrs. Hartley at the Eden estate.”

Erika shook her head in refusal. She rocked in the oak chair, peered through the slit in the lace curtains at the rain, and asked, “Why did you decide to become a doctor?”

He took a seat on the Turkish sofa and removed his helmet, turning it round and round in his hands. “Because my mother died when I was young.”

She stopped rocking. When she had described losing her own mother, he had not mentioned this. “How did she die?”

“My mother died of puerperal fever after the birth of her third son,” he said.

“Did the baby survive?”

“No,” he answered.

She nodded solemnly. The breeze through the window—the welcome coolness usually brought by the rains here—only chilled her now. Under her white sleeves, her shoulders felt clammy. They listened to the driving rain for a moment, and then he asked if she had everything she needed, and if there was anything he or the servants might do for her.

“Actually—” Erika rose from her chair. “I’ve discovered something very strange.” She led him to the bedroom she’d been sharing with Peter, where that morning, to her horror, she had opened a portmanteau and found that the clothes in the very center had become mildewed. Overnight, a pair of her boots had become covered with green mold. “Even clothes I hang up—” Opening the armoire, she showed him a white dress with filth growing on the cuffs.

“It’s the extreme humidity,” Ravell explained hurriedly. “It’s a never-ending fight. We’ll have your things washed and bleached immediately.” He hurried down the corridor, the walls echoing like a tunnel as he shouted Munga’s name.

That night Ravell retired to his quarters by nine o’clock as usual, but when she retreated to her own bed, Erika lay stiffly on the mattress, listening. The rains had stopped. High in the trees beyond the house, howler monkeys let out roars that left her shivering.

She had forgotten her book in the parlor, and thinking she might read herself to sleep, she took a lamp and went to get it. Returning through the hallway, she almost collided with a tall figure—the Negress who cooked their meals. They both froze, each startled to see the other. The black woman was nearly six feet in height, and she looked down at Erika. The cook’s great shoulders and statuesque presence gave the impression that she might have been carved from a giant balata tree. In her arms the servant carried a set of neatly ironed bed linens.

Back in her room, neglecting all her usual precautions against bats, Erika extinguished the lamp for a moment. The red howlers had grown silent, but she kept listening. She heard the Negress open Ravell’s door to enter his bedroom. From the opposite side of the garden, the Negress’s voice could be heard, and a short laugh from Ravell. The curious sounds drew Erika to the window, where she parted the drapes for a peek.

Within minutes, the Negress emerged from Ravell’s quarters, pulling the French doors shut behind her. She hurried through the courtyard, returning to the village where the workers lived. In her arms she carried soiled bedclothes, pillows, crumpled sheets.

Erika wondered why Ravell had summoned for help at such a late hour, and why he’d wanted his bedding changed. Had he wanted to sweeten his sheets for a reason? Did he plan to sleep with her?

A lamp still burned in Ravell’s quarters, his drapes still open. She saw him stride, fully dressed, into his room. He was alone.

She wondered if the French doors to his room would soon open, if he would cross the courtyard and ask her to join him on his freshened bed. A river of brightness from the moon poured through the slit in her curtains and fell across the floor. She returned to her bed and hoped and waited, but Ravell did not come.

Her period had finally ended, she told him.

“Well, that’s cause for celebration,” he said. “The tide is low enough to use the beach as a road,” he pointed out. “Would you like to go for a buggy ride and visit the coconut oil factory near Mayaro?”

The sun flared as they left the house, and she felt nervous. This was the first time she and Ravell had gone anywhere alone together. She wore a white shirtwaist that smelled of the jasmine soap his servants had used to wash it. She’d put on her walking skirt, with the hemline just above her ankles. Freed from the cumbersome linen napkins she’d been wearing, she stepped into the carriage and relished the air that played between her legs.

When Ravell shook the reins, the buggy lurched forward, and he, too, appeared nervous. He glanced around the hard beach as though the terrain were unfamiliar to him.

When they reached the Nariva River, they found that the ferryman—a person known as “Happy Jack”—had fallen asleep in the noonday sun. For a full ten minutes Ravell’s voice thundered and bellowed across the water, trying to awaken the man.

Finally Happy Jack wobbled to his feet, laughing at himself, and soon waved them aboard with apologies.

“He’s always like this,” Ravell told Erika. “Always happy. Always seeing the humor in things.”

When they arrived at the coconut oil factory, Erika felt Ravell put his hand lightly against the small of her back as he guided her inside. His eyes met hers as they entered the building. His gaze did not waver. The intimacy of his stare felt almost unbearable and she looked away, relieved when the factory manager appeared. The man began to explain how his workers took copra, the dried kernel, and pressed oil from it. From a thousand nuts, twenty gallons of oil could be squeezed. Coolies poured it into their hands and rubbed its moisture into their skin. The oil could be used for cooking. When Erika dipped her finger in a vat and tasted, the flavor was rather pleasant.

“Why do we use lard?” she said. “Such unappetizing stuff. Why not use this?”

On the way home, Ravell asked if she cared to see a place where monkeys gathered—an encampment of sorts—so they stopped the buggy and he led her into the woods. With a cutlass he slashed a tunnel for her to follow him through. Palms and creepers and veils of orchids fell.

When they reached the site, it was apparent that monkeys must have recently deserted the area, because they’d left half-eaten balata fruit strewn on the ground. Sunlight slit through the trees, but not a single
Cebus
monkey showed itself. While she and Ravell walked around, twigs crackled underfoot. He followed so close behind her that she sensed that at any moment, his hands might steer her hips.

They did not speak about the monkeys’ absence. No word passed between them at all. He still did not touch her. Finally she spun around to face him, but he had lifted his eyes toward whatever creature was whipping through foliage at the tops of trees.

She had her pride.
Last time I embraced him, he pushed me away,
she thought.
I will not be the one who reaches for him first.

They continued to meander around the site before Ravell said, “So you still plan to live in Italy one day.”

She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

Ravell frowned, cast his eyes upward, and then looked down again, shaking his head. “It makes no sense, your wanting a baby. You should go to Italy now, while you’re free.”

Erika’s hair had loosened, drifting to her shoulders. She paced around the clearing with fierce, strong steps.

“You remind me of myself,” he said. “With these risks you plan on taking. The best and worst parts of myself.”

“What I want is impossible, it seems,” Erika said. “But that won’t stop me. In the end, I’ll figure out a way.”

As they started back, it began to rain. Every stem and petal they brushed felt thick with moisture, filling her with sudden thirst. She wanted to suck a little water from the leaves. Instead, she closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue and caught a few drops and swallowed them. Ravell smiled faintly. A blue and yellow macaw floated past, and Erika noticed two yellow-breasted toucans seated on branches. Sober as judges, the toucans surveyed the forest with their hard, stern bills.

As the rain accelerated, she and Ravell quickened their pace.
Nothing can happen between us now,
she thought,
not with the rain scattering everything.
They passed a colony of green parrots that screeched so terribly, Erika put her hands over her ears for a moment. Rain soaked her white shirtwaist sleeves and pasted them to her arms and shoulders, her flesh showing through the thin fabric.

The showers let up as they drew close to the shore. Ravell, who’d been leading, stopped under a ring of palm trees and turned to her. His dark hair had flattened, the wet strands separated and stuck to his forehead and nape. He’d halted completely, his chest moving hard for breath. Again, he looked openly at her.

Then his mouth was upon hers, their tongues wet with each other’s, and they tasted rain. They kissed for so long that she drew back, finally. As they paused for air, she listened. The sounds seemed as intimate as everything about to come: the hiss of rain on leaves, the emission of liquid pouring through a tiny nearby stream, the teeming in the forest behind her, the violence of the Nariva River they’d crossed, the thunder, the lapping of waves.

They found a place where the ground was sandy and their knees fell upon it. They could see white curling surf through the palms. When she lifted her skirts, she saw him falter and hesitate.

“I’ve not come prepared,” he said.

“I don’t become pregnant very easily.”

“You did.”

“Only once in eight years,” she said. “It would take you eight years of trying.”

While her back twisted against the hard sand, she felt the life she’d known was over now. Their cheeks rubbed, damp against damp, his moustache against her ear. Drops fell from her jawbone. He licked the rain off her face. She heard sounds of suction as his clothes stuck to hers. His trousers had become glued to his thighs, and she watched him unpeel them from his body. His shirt, unbuttoned, fell open, and she saw that he was as taut and lean as a very young man. She traced his ribs, and she touched his chest hair, wet and dark as it curled around her fingers.

As he entered her, blinks of sun emerged, and she shut her red eyelids against it. Soon she heard the surf splitting apart, and felt a pleasure so sharp that it flashed to the arches of her feet.