Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

While the Australian doctor felt her pulse by gently placing his hands to her temples, he spoke in a soothing tone about the card games he and Edward enjoyed in the evening after she and the child were in bed.

He prescribed belladonna as needed for the pain and nausea; the bitter white syrup turned to heat in her mouth and throat and spread over her entire body like a gust of hot wind. All the while the doctor kept talking in his ridiculous Australian dialect she hardly understood; as she drifted further into the warm, warm sea of her own blood, his odd vocabulary mattered not at all. The pounding pain that enclosed her face and head like a mask receded, and Hattie was able to sleep.

The Australian doctor returned later to massage the veins in the back of her neck; his hands worked their way down and around to the insides of both her arms until suddenly she felt alarmed at his attention. She called Indigo from her game with the parrot in the alcove, and the doctor left off the massage.

Later she told Edward the Australian doctor made her feel uneasy; she feared he might be an imposter or one who touched women with license. But Edward laughed out loud at such a suggestion. He was confident Dr. Gates was no imposter because they had talked a good deal over late night toddies about their professional training. They talked about a great many things, including citrus horticulture, especially the effects of temperature and climate, and Edward was quite satisfied Dr. Gates was reliable. Undoubtedly she was suffering the combined effects of the migraine headache and the belladonna, Edward assured her.

At this Hattie felt a spark of anger at Edward because he had only a modest appetite for female anatomy, and he did not seem to realize other men were not so chaste or honorable. The Australian doctor’s fumbling with her bed clothes alarmed her because it recalled Mr. Hyslop’s fumbling attack on her breasts.

Dr. Gates came again while Edward was out with the child at breakfast. He entered the cabin without knocking and set off the parrot; for once she was grateful for the bird’s loud screeches. The deafening noise unnerved the doctor as he approached Hattie. He might have remained in the cabin alone with her longer but the parrot’s incessant noise cut short the doctor’s call, and Hattie was spared the ordeal of his groping hands.

After Hattie’s recovery, Edward continued to spend a good deal of time in the company of Dr. Gates, who was knowledgeable about a great many fascinating subjects. They discussed Edward’s citron scheme and the hot dry Riverside climate so similar to the deserts of Australia; oranges grown in the hot dry climes boasted the highest sugar content. The doctor’s face became animated as he contemplated the possibility of irrigated citrus groves in the outback. If he was able to procure suitable cuttings of the citron from Edward, then he was sure of success.

The doctor was about to develop a mine to obtain iron ore and cadmium from a meteor crater in northern Arizona. Perhaps they might come to an agreement for an exchange of live citron cuttings for shares of mining stock as well as premium meteorite specimens, which he could sell for a handsome price.

Edward was delighted at the opportunity to obtain meteorite specimens in large quantity because there was a growing interest in the objects by private collectors, and universities as well. The memory of the odd enclosure full of meteor irons near the market at Tampico returned to him again and again, and he regretted he had not persevered with the hideous blue-face woman; he might have had the lot of them — all quite different from one another, apparently from different locations. The increased interest in meteorites by collectors and researchers signaled a rise in the prices paid for specimens. The trade in meteorites had so many advantages over plants, which must be handled with great care or they were lost.

Edward and Dr. Gates made a tentative agreement to become partners once the citron was secured and they returned to the United States. The doctor generously lent Edward a catalogue of the meteorites in North America published a few years before by the American Academy of Science; it was the same reference the doctor used to locate his most exciting acquisition to date: the two-mile-wide meteor crater in northern Arizona. Edward packed the book for safekeeping until he had the leisure to read it on the return voyage. For now he immersed himself in books about methods of pruning and grafting citrus stock.

The ship docked in Genoa at half past eight in the morning and already Edward could feel a dramatic increase in the temperature, although the air was not as dry as he expected.

Genoa was a port and industrial city similar to Bristol in its congested streets and sweltering bad air, although its dust and soot could not conceal the bright sun or deep blue sky beyond the smoke.

Their arrival was overshadowed by the news of the assassination of the Italian king only three days before, in Milan, by anarchists, to avenge the executions of their comrades. Victor Emmanuel III took the throne, but there were rumors of clashes between dissidents and police.

Genoa appeared calm — no soldiers or barricades in the streets, at least not on the waterfront. While they waited on the pier for Edward to fetch a cab, Hattie and Indigo gazed at the piles of cargo, the pallets of polished granite and marble slabs in all colors, carefully crated for export. Indigo pointed them out to the parrot — a rainbow of colors just like you! she told him. On the pier, bundles of hardwood logs sat next to big clusters of bananas. Suddenly, over the noise of the passengers and street traffic, Indigo heard the unmistakable screeches of parrots from behind a pile of cargo on the pier. Instantly Rainbow gave a deafening screech in reply that left Indigo’s ears ringing. As a freight wagon pulled away from the pier, Indigo saw a large iron cage filled with parrots of all colors and sizes. The cries of his own kind were more than Rainbow could endure; he called back and flapped his wings frantically. As the wagon with the parrots passed, they saw sick and dying birds on the bottom of the cage. Indigo watched wide eyed, but the sight was too much for Hattie, who was overcome with nausea just as Edward returned with the cab.

Once Hattie was seated in the cab, out of the bright sun, the nausea subsided and she began to recover; the excitement of the new surroundings diminished her discomfort.

As the cab ascended the street into the hills, ruins of the old walls could be seen. As they passed the Piazza de Ferrari and the duke’s palace, Indigo pointed out the window and called out, “Look!” at the black-and-white striped facade of the cathedral. The stripes reminded Indigo of those unmistakable black-and-white stripes of the rattlesnake’s tail. To cheer up Rainbow after the upsetting encounter with the cage of new captives, Indigo lifted the travel cage closer to the window so he could see the stripes.

Hattie listened to the child play with the bird and realized Indigo believed the parrot understood everything she said. Indigo told the parrot they were much farther east now, near the villages where Christ’s Mother had been seen from time to time. Aunt Bronwyn told her about the frequent appearances in Italy, Spain, and France. The Messiah sent his Mother because the soldiers did not try to kill her, Indigo told the parrot.

Hattie and Edward discussed the problem the night before and determined the best course to take with Indigo’s exaggerations and fantasies about Jesus was to ignore them. Poor child, such harsh experiences and losses at an early age were bound to leave deep scars! Aunt Bronwyn and Indigo got along so beautifully Hattie didn’t interfere, although Edward and she were concerned all that talk about stones dancing and spirits living in stones misled the child. Hattie saw no real harm in the quaintly inaccurate version of Jesus Indigo learned from other Indians.