Anne Enright: The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch

This morning I do not move, and the boat does not move. I wake to a clanging sound, then the abrupt hiss of coals hitting the river as they clear the boilers out. Pht. Phht. Pht. I lie in the oven of the stateroom all morning. Through the open door, I see Senor Lopez busy, frantic, intent. He does not notice me. He unrolls plans on the table and calls for his engineer, Mr Whytehead, so I must have the door closed and dress in the airless dark. Outside, the light hits like a brick. My dress instantly wilts. The starch gives way in the wet air and my skirts limp altogether along the floor. So I trail around the deck and look at no one, as no one looks at me; then I lie in my gauzy tent and swing.

At noon they raise sail to catch a whisper, and so we veer from one side of the vast river to the other, at which point, the whisper dies.

Everyone sits about. The English – all sorts of railway-men, fitters, miners – fill the boat with dull delirium. Their voices drift on the hot air, and then stop.

I ask Milton for the name of a tree on the bank -a handsome tree with red and peeling bark. He laughs and gleefully rubs his forearm, saying, I think, 'White Man's Skin/

In the afternoon, I have Francine put all my white veils away. They increase the power of the sun's light and the danger of sunburn and freckles. They are also, I think, very injurious to the eyes. Green is the only colour that should be worn as a summer veil.

Freckle wash – take one dram of muriatic acid, half a pint of rainwater, half a teaspoonful of spirits of lavender: mix, and apply it two or three times a day to the freckles with a camel's-hair pencil.

When Doctor Stewart joins us after dinner, I take him aside to ask for muriatic acid. He says that my complexion is probably subject to my condition, but that lemons may do just as well. He has little French and no Spanish, and so I am forced to speak English to him. Mr Whytehead has everything, of course, up to and including Swedish.

And so we assemble – my little band. It is too hot for cards. It seems that, apart from my freckles, there is nothing to talk about. I try Sebastopol. I recall Buenos Aires. I wonder at the possibility of a garden in Asuncion, and what might grow there. But Senor Lopez turns always to the state of the unmoving boat, her inner workings, her boilers, vertical or horizontal, her trunnions, whatever they may be. I have no words for these things, and leave it all to Mr Whytehead.

I long for my piano, but it is deep in the hold. Sometimes, lurching across the Atlantic, I would hear a tinny discord; a distant twang that felt like one of my own heartstrings snapping.

But we must have music, the boat is so still now, and the night gathers about us as though there might never be another day. I have the captain order in a musical seaman, in order to push back the darkness. The man holds his cap in his hands and gives a humble, swelling account of 'Barbara Allen'.

Ο mother, mother, make my bed To lay me down in sorrow. My Love has died for me to-day, I'll die for him to-morrow.

Senor Lopez trumps him with something astonishing in Spanish and Mr Whytehead, prevailed upon by myself, finally opens his mouth – out of which floats, to our amazement, an easy, soaring tenor. The room is all tenderness. He sings a carol, 'Quelle estcette odeur agréable, bergères, qui ravit tous nos sens? and all uninvited, propatria, you might say, Francine supplies the descant.

After which, everything is easy. Senor Lopez wants Whytehead to bet with him on our arrival date in Asuncion, and he demurs. Everything he does makes us laugh, now. No one can pronounce his name, and this fusses him. Francine enquires, by way of general mirth, what his Christian name might be and, with some hesitation, he brings out the pearl, 'Keld'.

Doctor Stewart clears his throat – to smother a laugh, I think; but then he fills our little cabin with his sudden baritone. Tuneless enough – but large, quite large.

The night has gathered in again.

This afternoon, Francine said that her mother has a friend – whose generous attention she still enjoys, at the age, she must be, of almost forty-five. A pleasant enough man, Francine says. He makes a visit every afternoon at five-thirty by the clock. Her mother calls him always 'my dear friend' – the use of his Christian name being less than respectable, and his patronymic an intimate, formal pleasure that must be reserved only for his wife.

'But Senor Lopez is not married,' I say, quite pointedly, and Francine keeps her head down. Still, I find the conceit quite pretty. I tried it on Senor Lopez, this evening, I said,

'My dear friend.' And he said,

'Yes?'

What was that thing I wanted to say about butterflies? There was a group of them, anchored to the sand, their wings flicking this way and that in the heat and the breeze. One was the most astonishing blue. I have not seen such a blue since leaving Paris. And with it, as though in colloquy, fifty more of every variety. They all sat and stirred like ladies in a garden, their skirts parting to show underskirts of more beautiful hue, a flash of violet, a swish of peony edged with black. They spread them to sit, and played with their fans, and flicked open their parasols in the sun.

I asked Milton why they gathered together like that, on certain spots on the bank. He shrugged, and looked, I thought, quite comical. He said that they go where an animal has pissed, or a man has pissed. At least I think this is what he said. Then he rolled out his tongue, as though to lick.

And now I do not know what I wanted to say about butterflies. I have been laughing all day, but it makes me sad. I recall the salon of the Princess Mathilde, the richest room I was ever in. And yes, women like myself, newly arrived in town, all clustered and fluttering, when a rich man speaks. And when he leaves the room, a general business with fans, as we settle on his words and eat.

'At least they do not fight,' I say.

'Which?'

'The butterflies. At least they are beautiful, and they do not fight.'

'Enough piss, for everyone,' he says.

The silence, again, is deafening. The baby flutters inside me, and settles. Doctor Stewart's red hair is fading to sand in the sun. He has switched from cane alcohol to a more respectable rum.

Today, from the swamp, a new crawling thing. Senor Lopez leapt away from the mattress and swore. Vinchucas. Like cockroaches. Evil-smelling. I pull up my nightdress in fright and find more bites. Hundreds of bites. They like white meat, he says, and then he chews on me himself. Also my blood is richer now. Every crawling, flying thing can smell my belly from miles around. They fly in under my skirts and eat. Francine is set to get them out before I put my bloomers on, and gets comically, horribly, buried in the layers of cloth. My dear friend shouts as he watches, and slaps his leg. It is the thing that he enjoys most, in the day.

I have ordered Milton for my own use, to keep the mosquitoes from inside my shanty pavilion in the bow. Also jejenes, which are tiny, infernal things. Their bite does not last unless scratched, but is the most exquisite torture. for the first while. Milton 's legs are covered with faded welts, but I have never seen him scratch, except in an idle way. They don't seem to bother him. My very fingernails itch. I want to jump into the river until the water closes over my head. But there are things in the water too (not to mention the English animals on deck) that stop me, the flesh-eating pirhana fish, which makes for a great splashing and shouting when the sailors take to the river, and worse – the rana, with a barb, Senor Lopez tells me, so long, the wound astonishingly painful and slow to heal.