Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Prospero's Daughter - Elizabeth Nunez страница 8

Название: Prospero's Daughter

Автор: Elizabeth Nunez

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Античная литература

Серия:

isbn: 9781617755422

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ to the boatman.

      “You don’t want to know why? The tourists and them always asking why. Why this, why that. Sometimes just to satisfy them, I does make up things I don’t know nothing about, but I know about Monos and Huevos.”

      Mumsford was not impressed. He was more concerned about what he needed to look out for when he got to Chacachacare. “Are there monkeys on Chacachacare?” he asked.

      “It don’t have no monkey on Chacachacare,” the boatman said, and undeterred, though Mumsford had positioned his back firmly against him, he informed him that the Spanish people killed all the monkeys on Monos. “They name it Monos and then they kill the Red Howlers. You think they would’ve change the name after that, right? But you wrong.”

      Mumsford looked steadily in front of him.

      “Is turtle egg they have on Huevos,” the boatman went on. “The turtle swim out in the sea after they lay they egg on the beach. That is how the Spanish people make it in the early days. They eat turtle egg and turtle meat. When they leave here and gone on their way discovering, they used to turn the turtle upside down on the ship so the turtle stay alive. I just can’t believe they was so bad that every day they cut off a piece of the turtle and leave them bleeding till they finish them off. But you know,” his voice became grave, “those Spanish people did some bad, bad things to the Africans they made slaves.”

      Mumsford wanted him to shut up. “If there are turtle eggs on the island, the Spaniards must not have killed all the turtles,” he said mockingly. He was tired of these stories about what white men had done to Africans. The past was the past. The slaves were free now. The present was what concerned him, and in the present, his body was on fire. If the trip lasted much longer he would burn, and then in a matter of days he would start shedding like a common reptile.

      “You right, sir. So I suppose you could say in the case of Huevos, the name still fit. Correct, sir?”

      “Correct,” Mumsford said without enthusiasm.

      The boatman said nothing more for a while. When he spoke again, his voice was so soft that Mumsford was not quite sure he had heard him correctly.

      “I suppose you know the princess was there.” That was what the boatman had said, and it was only his tone that made Mumsford ask him to repeat himself, for a sly intimacy had entered his voice and Mumsford wanted to be sure.

      “Yes, Princess Margaret sheself,” the boatman said.

      Mumsford glared at him.

      “She come with the governor-general, two, maybe three years now. She like the tortoiseshell she find there. Papers say she plan to make a comb and spectacles for sheself.”

      It was not tortoiseshell; it was the shell of the hawksbill turtle, unique for its translucent amber color, some of which was speckled with black, others with green, red, or white. A letter written by a self-styled naturalist was printed in the papers warning of the extinction of the turtles if “certain royalty” insisted on killing them for combs and spectacles.

      “He doesn’t dare mention the princess by name,” Mumsford had said to his mother when he read the complaint. “The coward. These are Crown lands and Crown seas. The Crown can do whatever the Crown wants with Crown property.”

      “She say the water in the bay in Huevos so nice, she find it hard to leave. She bathe here all the time in she bathing suit. Between you and me,” the boatman continued confidentially, “she could have bathed naked if she want. Hardly anybody here.”

      His mouth quivered slightly and Mumsford took notice when he passed his tongue across his bottom lip.

      “I lucky. I get the chance to see her one day. She cheeks pink, pink, like a rose. But I never did see her in she bathing suit. If only . . .”

      It was too much for him. The body of Her Royal Highness exposed to the lecherous fantasies of a common boatman! Mumsford cut him off. “How much farther?” he barked.

      But if the boatman had been hurt by Mumsford’s rebuff, he soon got his revenge. They were now entering the tail end of the third boca on the approach to Rust’s Bay in Chacachacare. Waves swelled and fell in quick succession like the folds of a fan. Mumsford clutched his seat. “Hold on tight!” the boatman called out to him. The boat rose high in the air and then slapped down hard on the water. Mumsford lurched forward.

      “Hold up your back!” the boatman shouted. Before Mumsford could respond, he was walking toward him. “Yes, just so,” the boatman said, and passed him, making his way to the helm of the boat. “See, I can stand up because I accustom.” He spread out his arms and legs, balancing himself perfectly though the boat pitched up and down, flinging long sprays of water at them, almost blinding Mumsford. “This is nothing. We do this all the time. I know how it bad for you people from the big countries,” he yelled over the loud thudding sounds of the hull hitting the water. “Is just a little rough passage. We go pass it soon. Don’t be frighten. Is a little thing.”

      The nerves at the ends of Mumsford’s fingers were still tingling, his stomach still churning, when the boat reached calmer waters, close to the right prong of the horseshoe that was the island of Chacachacare. His face was scorched, and in spite of the seawater that had soaked his jacket, he was hot, sweaty. Only after the boat rounded the bend and a pleasant assortment of pink and ivory angles appeared at the edge of the sea, nestled in the forest of trees that fanned up an incline, did the tightness in his jaw begin to loosen.

      It was the A-framed structure, with wings behind it, on top of another floor with a covered veranda, that calmed him. For suddenly in front of him were not the contours of a tropical house but of a Swiss chalet. Snow, an icy wind blowing through pine trees were what he was thinking of when he took out his handkerchief and dried the perspiration that had gathered on his brow.

      “Dr. Gardner’s house, one presumes,” he said to the boatman, and allowed himself a faint smile. But the boatman said no, it was not Dr. Gardner’s house. It was the real doctor’s house.

      “Real?”

      “The doctor who see about the lepers.”

      Disappointment brought the stiffness back in Mumsford’s jaw.

      Misinterpreting the change in Mumsford’s face, the boatman added quickly, “Maybe you see him another day. He don’t always be here. He come to the island now and then to give the lepers they medicine. If you want to see him, maybe you come another time.”

      Mumsford bit his lip. The house was still as a grave. As they drew nearer, it seemed all but abandoned. The pretty pink that had caught his eyes was in fact rust. The entire galvanized roof, apparently neglected for years in the sun and rain, was stained with it. In parts the rust had turned bright orange, in some places a pale pink. Close up he saw that the ivory ripples below the roof were wood slats that were spotted and scraped, in need of fresh paint. The whitewash on the concrete walls on the bottom floor was recent but it barely camouflaged the places where the concrete had begun to crumble. The wooden shutters and doors were closed. Here and there Mumsford could make out where a shutter was broken, a slat dangled from a nail. Weeds and thin patches of high grass sprouted between the dirt and stones near the concrete pillars that held up the house. The only sign of life, if it could be called a sign of life, was a brown burlap hammock on the veranda swinging listlessly in the slight breeze. Someone had strung one end to a nail on the wall of the house and the other to one of the four unpainted wood poles that supported the rusty galvanized roof covering the veranda. But there was nothing, no СКАЧАТЬ