Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Indigo was curled up in a ball on the seat next to the window; her pathetic state brought tears to Hattie’s eyes when she remembered how spirited the child had been only the day before; if only they had clipped the parrot’s wing feathers as they grew out. Hattie tried to comfort her with a pat on the back, but it was no use; Indigo seemed inconsolable. Hattie recalled the articles she’d read about people who died of broken hearts. She was concerned because the child refused to eat. If the child took the hunger strike too far she was liable to become seriously ill before they could find a doctor. She wanted to take the child and return to Livorno to search for the parrot while Edward completed his business with the citron cuttings.

Edward disagreed. The next boat to Livorno did not depart for three days; by then his business would be completed anyway. The parrot might already have been found; the child was only tired from travel; she’d spring up in no time after some rest. Hattie was reluctant to agree, and gave a deep sigh as she nodded her head. Edward felt his neck and face begin to redden; this was really too much, at such a critical juncture of the Corsica mission!

“When the child is thirsty and hungry enough she will eat!” he said; then the shocked expression on Hattie’s face caused him to soften his tone. “By the time we return to Livorno the parrot will be found and Indigo will be just fine.”

Indigo watched the world move around her but she was outside the world now; voices sounded distant, but no matter, because there was nothing she needed to hear from these people. She moved when she was told and sat silently until it was time to move again. She forgot her valise on the train when they got off in Cervione, but she could see Edward was in a rush and short tempered so she said nothing. The valise contained all the seeds she’d collected and the notebook and colored pencils Laura gave her, but none of it seemed important now that Rainbow was lost. She remembered Grandma Fleet said if you lost something, you should talk to it, apologize for your carelessness, and ask it to please return to you. She whispered to Rainbow almost constantly to let him know she would find him.

Just then, Hattie looked at Indigo and noticed the valise was missing. Passengers were boarding the train. Where was it? Indigo looked down and shrugged her shoulders. Hattie started to reboard the train but Edward was adamant: There was no time! They must be on their way. It was the child’s own fault, Edward pointed out, and she would never learn responsibility if she did not face the consequences.

“Good-bye, seeds. Good-bye, colored pencils,” Indigo whispered as their other luggage was loaded on the cab. Then the conductor hurried out of the train car with the little brown valise. The valise came back to her just like that! Rainbow would return too.

Edward tried to soften the tone of his voice because he did regret the child’s sadness. “You must learn to take better care of things, Indigo,” he said as he gave the conductor a coin. “You would not have lost the parrot if you were more careful.”

Dry mountain foothills the color of dust surrounded the small town and blocked the cooling winds off the sea. The town of Cervione was even smaller than Bastia, with few people on the streets in the heat. By the sun’s low angle Edward calculated that it was the dinner hour, half past six or thereabouts. Since his accident in Brazil when his pocket watch was smashed, he made it his practice to calculate the time by the position of the sun before he took out his watch to check his calculation. He felt reassured to know the time; one of the worst parts of the Brazilian ordeal had been the sensation time disappeared with the white men, or stopped when his watch was smashed by the same rock that shattered his leg. Without the watch, there was only the same night and the same day that repeated themselves until time itself became the scalding pain of the compound fractures. He had been slowly dragging himself toward the riverbank above the swift currents to let go of himself forever in the rushing water when the monkey and the mestizo brothers came along.

The only hotel open in Cervione during the month of August was named the Napoleon; of course, Hattie thought. The stairs and halls looked and smelled as if they were last scrubbed during Napoleon’s era. The hotel’s little restaurant was closed for renovations; the hotel clerk indicated that since the heat of the summer months discouraged all but the most hearty travelers, Cervione was a bit too far from the coast to benefit much from ocean breezes; Bastia was far nicer. Most summer visitors stayed there and hired carriages for day trips.

The hotel clerk was the brother of the town’s mayor, and before Edward could think of a polite refusal, the clerk sent a boy to bring the mayor to meet their American visitors.

Hattie and the child followed the porter to their rooms upstairs while Edward waited for the mayor to arrive. His brother broke out a dusty bottle of brandy from under the hotel reception desk and wiped three dusty glasses with his clean handkerchief. The mayor, a short heavy-set man in his early sixties, arrived out of breath and sweating. Years before, he lived in the United States, and he never grew tired of greeting visitors from his adopted country. What he missed most from America was baseball; otherwise the wine and the bread of Corsica were far superior. They drank a number of toasts to their countries and to themselves and to tourism before Edward managed to extricate himself with a promise to return as soon as his camera was unpacked, to make the mayor’s portrait. He was glad to have the excuse of Hattie and the child upstairs.

By the time the proper lighting was had and the mayor changed his frock coat for the photograph, an hour had passed, and another hour passed while he carefully arranged the mayor’s arms and hands on his lap and turned his head for a favorable effect of the flash powder. Then it was time for more brandy all around and big bowls of a savory vegetable soup with little curled pasta and long loaves of freshly baked bread. Finally he left his new companions with promises to send them their portraits once he completed the process of printing them. Both Hattie and Indigo were asleep — the child on the floor of the alcove, which made sense on such a warm night.

Edward closed his eyes but the heat made sleep difficult. His thoughts raced: so many decisions to be made, so many steps to go over to have healthy twig cuttings. The goodwill of the mayor and local officials was essential, especially during this time of civil unrest. One of the mayor’s deputies made remarks, in jest, of course, about spies and anarchist agents in disguise, which gave them all a good laugh. The mayor was kind enough to arrange for his younger brother to rent them a buggy with a shade for their tour of the farming villages in the mountains. Edward asked specifically to visit Borgo, the village reputed to have the best candied citron industry. Their appointment was for eight the next morning so they would have a little of the morning coolness for their trip.

His strategy was simple: he would find a grove of healthy-looking trees and pretend to make a landscape photograph that included the citron trees. Then as he set up the tripod and camera in front of the grove of citron trees, he would unpack the two sharpened twig knives from their small wooden box inside the camera case with the potatoes.

All night the bedding felt damp beneath him and no matter how he turned or arranged the pillow, he could not sleep. He listened to Hattie’s breathing next to him and the child’s soft snoring from the floor in the alcove until he dozed off, only to wake at the creak of the bedsprings when Hattie got up and walked to the window.