Prospero's Daughter. Elizabeth Nunez

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СКАЧАТЬ was in the Land of the Dead. There were no rivers, no ponds, no freshwater anywhere on the island, the commissioner had told him. No water except what one chanced to collect when it rained.

      “And the lepers?” A chill ran up his spine.

      “Not to worry. They never come here. They on the other side. ’Rond the bend. They can’t see you from this side.”

      “And Dr. Gardner?” It was an effort to keep his fear from affecting his voice.

      “Up yonder,” the boatman said, pointing to the distance beyond the doctor’s house. “Way behind there.”

      All Mumsford could see was a thick nest of trees and interlocking branches. His eyebrows converged.

      “It have a road,” the boatman said sympathetically. “You get there easy.”

      But no road was in sight when the boatman steered the boat to the low stone wall that separated the doctor’s house from the sea, and once on land, on the pebbled dirt yard that bordered the doctor’s house (for there was no beach), what the boatman led him to was not a road but a dirt track, bounded on either side by bushes thinned out by the sun and entwined with vines whose brown stems were as thick as rope. Stiff dried branches stuck out across the dirt track and poked his legs.

      “You lucky is the dry season,” the boatman said, “or you need cutlass to pass here. The bush thick when it rain.”

      Mumsford asked him about snakes. In the dry season they crawled close to houses looking for water.

      “Only horsewhip,” the boatman said.

      “Horsewhip? Is it poisonous?”

      “We does call it horsewhip because . . .”

      Lines of sweat were trickling down Mumsford’s forehead into his eyes. He lost his patience. “For God’s sake, man.” He swiped his hand across his eyes. “I don’t want to know why you call it horsewhip. I want to know if it is poisonous. Can you answer that simple question?”

      “Everybody from England does want to know,” the boatman said defensively.

      “I want to know if it is poisonous. Can you tell me that? ” Mumsford had moved to the middle of the dirt track, far from the edge of the bushes, and was examining the area around him.

      “Is a thin, thin, green snake. Like a whip. Just sting you when it whip you. It don’t kill.”

      Not poisonous. But Mumsford had no chance to savor his relief. Just when he felt the tension ease from his shoulders, the boatman reached between his belt and the waistband of his shorts and pulled out his machete.

      “What?” Mumsford drew in his breath.

      “Iguana,” he said, peering into the bushes. “They big like little dragon here.”

      For Mumsford the trip on foot to Dr. Gardner’s house was a nightmare. His heart raced, beads of sweat collected dust on his top lip and down the sides of his bright red cheeks. He clutched his briefcase close to his chest.

      “Carry that for you?” the boatman offered.

      But for Mumsford the briefcase was a lifeline. It was England in a world shot backward to the heart of darkness.

      Then suddenly it all changed. Then suddenly, at the end of the path where the bushes had grown wild, though now, in the dry season, were almost leafless and brown, was a meadow, a field of green stretching before him. And at the end of the field of green was a blaze of color, and behind it a white house with eaves and alcoves and large baskets of luscious green ferns hanging from the ceiling to the railings on a glorious porch.

      “Dr. Gardner.” The boatman stopped. He waved his machete in the direction of the house. “Is here he live. I come back for you here. In an hour.”

      It was frightening, too, all that green. Never had he seen such green, never on any lawn he knew, never even in England. For it was not simply green, it was brilliantly green. Plastic, artificially, brilliantly green. As he walked along the paved path that led to the house, he saw that the flowers, too, were brilliantly colorful, artificially colorful. But what made him suck in his breath was not the brilliance, the artificiality of color, but the variety, not of plants, but of the colors on a single plant. There, along the front of the house, were rose plants, and on each plant were flowers of every hue, and bougainvillea (yes, he was sure; he leaned in close to be sure), their petals splashed with polka dots, blue upon pink, violet on orange, yellow on red, the petals on some opened out flat like lilies.

      THREE

      THE MIRACLES of the latest research in botany,” Dr. Gardner said and satisfied Mumsford with his logical explanation for the shapes and colors. “I’ve been experimenting.” He had an answer, too, for the plastic-green lawn. “A special fertilizer, and I have a reservoir. I store water in the rainy season and pump it into my garden. I’ve built a generator in the back. We can take a look when we’re done here.”

      They were already well inside the house when Mumsford asked his questions about the lawn and the flowers, and only because he was prompted, only because Dr. Gardner said to him, “What do you think about my lawn and my flowers?” Yet as he had walked toward the house no other questions had consumed him more, no other questions had been on the tip of his tongue causing him to lose memory temporarily of his only reason for coming. The green of the grass, the texture, the shapes and colors of the flowers, disturbed him but thrilled him, too. He wanted to know how the Englishman had done it. But when the Englishman appeared, the thrill he had felt subsided and his head spun with confusion and disappointment.

      Dr. Gardner had met him on the porch. He had come through the front door tucking a white shirt down the back of his tan cotton pants. He was a tall, thin, wiry man with tiny nuggets of steel blue for eyes and skin tough like leather, burnt to a deep olive brown. His hair fell down in scraggly locks to his shoulders. It was a dark reddish color but the ends were light, bleached by the sun.

      “It’s Mumsford, isn’t it?” he asked and he held out his hand. “I mean it’s not Mumford, or Munford, is it?”

      “Yes, yes, it is Mumsford.”

      He shoved the rest of his shirt down the front of his pants, pulled a blue elastic band off his wrist, and tied back his hair. “Servants,” he said. “Ariana told me an Inspector Munford was here to see me, but I knew she had made a mistake.”

       Ariana.

      Before Gardner appeared, Mumsford had knocked on the door, and when there was no answer he had peered through the window. He was certain he had seen a naked woman dashing across the drawing room. He had caught a glimpse of her back before she disappeared through another door. A tumble of wild black curls swished across her bare bottom, back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

      “Ariana,” Dr. Gardner called out. “Ariana!”

       Perhaps it was another woman.

      “Come, come, Inspector,” Dr. Gardner urged him. “Don’t stand there in the sun. Come inside. It’s nicer inside.”

      She reappeared hovering behind him. The same tumble of hair. Ariana.

      “Don’t СКАЧАТЬ