Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez

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СКАЧАТЬ fundamentals. Just the fundamentals, Inspector.”

      “I didn’t intend to entertain you, sir.”

      “I mean, colored people don’t leave dots on white people. Or stripes, for that matter. A black and a white horse don’t make a zebra, Mumsford.”

      “I’m sorry you should find me amusing, sir.”

      “No. I suppose it’s not your fault. I suppose I shouldn’t have laughed.” Gardner patted his cheeks dry. “I should beg your pardon. I should apologize.”

      “No apology is needed, sir.”

      “I suppose you shouldn’t be blamed.”

      “A misunderstanding, sir.”

      “But one would have thought the colonial office would have prepared you men better before they let you come out here.”

      “They prepared me, sir.”

      “But surely, you’ve seen a freckled white person?”

      Mumsford’s face hardened. “He lived here in the house with you?” His voice was loaded with exaggerated formality.

      “Carlos?” Gardner seemed surprised by the question.

      “I am here to discuss Carlos, sir. Did he live here?” Mumsford crossed off misshapen in his notes.

      “Here?” Gardner looked around him.

      “Yes. Did he live here?”

      “From the first day,” Gardner said.

      “With you and your daughter? Twelve years?” Mumsford pressed his questions.

      “I thought he would be someone to amuse her. I let them play together.” Gardner stroked the legs of his pants.

      “Them?”

      “Carlos and my daughter. Then, when I started teaching her to read—she was four, he was six at the time—he stood nearby listening. He picked up what I was saying to her. Later he would take her little books and try to read on his own. Sometimes I would see him reading to her. Many times I was busy in my garden.” He paused, and checked the buttons on his shirt. The top one was undone. He buttoned it. “My orchids, you know, Mumsford. They are the rarest in the world. If we have time, before you leave . . .”

      But Mumsford would not let him change the subject so easily. Biology might not be his expertise, he might know nothing about botany, he might not be able to grow grass that looked like plastic or make polka dots appear on the petals of bougainvillea, but he was an expert in detective work. He could keep his focus in a deposition. “So he read to her?” Mumsford cut him off in mid-sentence.

      “I gave him my books. I taught my daughter and he listened,” Gardner said.

      “Your daughter did not go to school?”

      “We don’t have school here, Inspector. It’s a leper colony. Or haven’t you noticed?”

      “Surely her education?”

      “Fire i’ th’ blood, Inspector. These tropical climes arouse a man’s sexual desires. We men are old goats. I could not put her at risk sending her to school in Trinidad.”

      “Surely in a boarding school?” Mumsford asked, malice curling around the edges of his question.

      “There are never sufficient protections. Besides, Inspector, she could do no better than to have me as a schoolmaster. Others might not have been so careful.”

      “Careful?”

      “To teach her what she needed to know.”

      Mumsford was struck by his emphasis on needed but he stuck to his objective, which now was not merely to gather information, but to make Gardner pay for humiliating him. “But Carlos?” he asked, taking no little satisfaction in noticing that his line of questioning was agitating Gardner.

      “If she were a princess in a castle, she could not have had a better tutor,” Gardner said.

      Mumsford made himself clearer. “Was Carlos there all the time when you were teaching her?”

      “I’m not sure what you are implying, Inspector, but yes, he was there sometimes. I took interest in him when I saw how quickly he learned. He had some aptitude for science. I gave him my books.”

      “Was he a help to you, sir?”

      “A help?”

      “When you were working with the lepers, sir.”

      “I was not needed to work with the lepers. I thought I made that clear, Inspector.”

      “Ah, yes. Then in the garden, sir?”

      “The garden?”

      “Did he help you in the garden? With your orchids, sir?”

      “Ah, my orchids.” A grim smile cut across Gardner’s face. “He excelled there. He learned quickly about crossbreeding, cross-pollination. He was a bastard, you see. A crossbreed himself.”

      “And you think it was that he wanted to do?”

       “That?”

      “With your daughter, sir. Was it crossbreeding he was thinking of, sir?”

      Gardner got up abruptly and paced the room. He ran his hand over the top of his head down to his neck. The elastic band that held his ponytail slid off and his hair hung in limp locks above his shoulders. “None of this. None of what I say to you must leave here.” He came close to Mumsford. The muscles in his face were taut as wires.

      “Only to the commissioner,” Mumsford said. “Only between us.”

      “He came to me and said he wanted to have children with her.” Gardner was breathing hard. A vein popped out along the length of his forehead, slight at first and then thick, blue, hard, ugly, pushing against his leathery skin.

      “He said that? Those words exactly?” Mumsford was taking notes.

      “No. He used an ancient language from one of my books.”

      “Which book?”

      “Never mind.” Gardner massaged the back of his neck. “He said he wanted to people the island with little Carloses.”

      “People?”

      “Make babies.”

      “But his exact words, sir? Do you remember his exact words?”

      “He said he wanted to people the island with Calibans.”

      “Calibans?”

      “He meant himself.”

      “But СКАЧАТЬ