The Doctor and the Diva (32 page)

“You cannot leave this island without seeing our famous horse races,” Mr. Hartley told Peter and Erika. “The celebrations go on for three days.”

All the people of Trinidad filled the roads and headed for Port of Spain for the event, which always occurred just after Christmas. En route to the festivities, Erika could not keep herself from staring at the travelers they passed. From across the island, dilapidated, rickety carts all moved in the same direction, carrying entire coolie families: the men in white, the women and children sheathed in silks that stunned the eye—a saturation of amethyst, topaz, emerald, and marigold.

On Port of Spain’s Savannah, where the races took place, a mounted escort delivered the Governor to the grandstand. Behind bamboo stands, coolies peddled curries and potato-filled pastries.

Peter and Mr. Hartley and other friends cheered the riders. Their ears grew pink as they shouted for the horses they’d bet on. Erika studied the crowd of spectators. The races did not interest her so much as the staggering array of colors that fanned across the perimeters of the Savannah. As women in saris brushed past, Erika stared at the rosettes of gold pierced through their left nostrils, and she counted the earrings—at least five—that outlined each woman’s ear. They were outfitted like princesses, and as they walked, one heard the sound of money. Coolie husbands often invested all their savings in their wives’ adornments, in the gold and silver bracelets that clinked from wrist to elbow. The wives’ anklets, too, jingled as they stepped.

Suppose one of these women deserted her husband? Erika thought. He would lose everything.

Ravell wandered off to say hello to an acquaintance. When he made his way back through the crowd, he insinuated himself behind Erika and squeezed her lightly at the waist. Nothing seemed quite so delicious as that moment, his hands upon her, then gone.

He was standing next to her when the one horrible event of the afternoon came. A nimble jockey, as slight as a child on the back of his horse, rushed into the lead, upsetting all predictions, surprising and thrilling nearly everybody. The hordes opened their mouths. Silk handkerchiefs flashed in the air as he won. Hearing the roar, Erika’s eyes smarted with tears: it reminded her of those times when she’d sung so well that the audience had been lifted to their feet.

Afterward Erika kept thinking of those cheers, the last sounds the jockey must have heard. At least that rising of voices reached his ears. For just after he won, the jockey’s horse ran into a post and the man fell to the ground, dead.

A
s a lighter carried them to the steamship anchored offshore, she and Peter waved to Ravell until their arms ached, and he became a fading figure on the wharf.

“We’ll visit Ravell again next year,” Peter said. Erika noticed that her husband, like her, seemed a little bleak and mournful.

On the steamship
Trent
, Erika and Peter had been given the best stateroom, the one vacated by Trinidad’s Governor, who had recently returned from England. But she did not want to go to their quarters yet. At the Captain’s invitation, Peter hurried off to the bridge to survey the panorama of the Caribbean while she remained at the stern. With a sense of stabbing loss, she stared back in the direction from which they had come.

The island of coconut palms sank away and Ravell disappeared over the edge of the earth, like a setting sun.

The previous night at the Eden estate, she and Ravell had stepped out into the garden and stood behind a tall hedge, knowing these would be their last moments alone together. In the darkness they made promises to write to each other, and she told him she would send a friend’s address (Magdalena’s, perhaps?) where he might send her private letters. He held her so tightly and for so long that she had grown nervous and worried that the others who remained in the house might question their absence. As she began to pull away, his shoulders trembled, and she felt shudders of sadness moving through him. His cheeks were wet when she kissed his face. She squeezed his hands hard before she broke away from him—afraid that she’d cry, too—and hurried back to the house. It was a long time before he followed her. When he finally returned to the parlor, he wore an overcoat, waved a brusque good-bye to everyone, and departed quickly.

Seabirds followed in the steamer’s wake, fluttering behind the boat like tiny pennants, caught up in invisible drafts of air. She did not want to turn around and face north, so she stood there, wind-whipped and numb. For several moments she bowed her head and sobbed hard in silence. Fortunately no one passed by, so no one noticed. Only when a hard gust sucked her parasol inside out did she grab the handle and fight to set it aright, and then she went below.

Near the Bahamas they awoke to a day that was deceptively clear. They were coming to the end of the tropics, yet seaweed still lay thick on the surface, and flying fish still erupted in spurts. Everyone had shed their whites and dug through their trunks for heavier clothes. By tomorrow they would stand at the rails shivering.

Peter and Erika sat at the Captain’s table, along with Mrs. Bickford, a widow traveling with her daughter Prudence. The two ladies had been visiting Mrs. Bickford’s brother, the American consul in Barbados. During lunch Mrs. Bickford said that she felt quite appalled by the card playing and gambling on board—even the four Colombian priests had been at it. After lunch she intended to head directly down to her stateroom and write a letter of complaint to the Company.

As she spoke, such a heavy roll moved under the steamer that it overturned Mrs. Bickford’s bowl of curry soup, spreading a stain of violent yellow across the tablecloth. That was the first sign of the weather to come.

At a nearby table, Germans sat with their napkins tied around their necks like bibs. When one man leaned back gently, the front legs of his chair lifted slightly. As the sea pitched again, the German fell right over, his black shoes pointed toward the ceiling.

By three o’clock the skies had darkened. Standing on the ship’s bridge, Peter saw a wave reach up and break a chain that held a set of deck chairs. Half the deck chairs washed into the sea; the other loose chairs were sent hurtling with a force that could kill a man.

The crew hands rushed to tighten doors and batten down whatever they could. The storm shifted the cargo—coal, bananas, thousands of bags of cocoa, a herd of Hereford cows—and made the ship list badly to port. Peter could feel the imbalance in his hip and shoulders, as if one of his legs were shorter than the other. The steamer butted hard against the sea. His heart took a wild leap as he watched a wave crash higher than the ship’s funnel, because it looked so terrible, and so glorious.

Erika braced herself as she moved down the corridor, her arms horizontal, her palms pressing the walls as she lurched from side to side. A man threw open the door to his stateroom and pointed to water sloshing across his floor. His mouth was agape.

The purser, carrying a mandolin, staggered and stumbled toward the music room, where he hoped to calm the passengers by playing a few tunes. The sea heaved him hard against a door, and he fell backward. Erika winced at what she saw next: the purser’s mandolin, smooth as a red-gold gourd, hit a wall, and its neck snapped. When the purser turned the wooden instrument over, the front had been bashed to splinters.

When he glanced up, she saw the anguish welling up in his eyes, and she knew what she must do.

In the music room the Colombian priests lay stomach-down on the velvet window seats, their heads hanging over the sides of the long benches.

She went to the piano, planted her feet firmly against the floor, and accompanied herself as she sang in Italian. Her fingers hit the notes quickly, her throat on fire, with her voice leaping across two octaves, outrunning the waves.