Джойс Оутс: Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars

The terrain of the island is astonishing. Very hilly, sculpted-looking, the calcified lava resembling coiled intestines of the hue of coal. At first glance the landscape looks dead but when you look closely you see that it is covered in iguanas that are near-invisible, camouflaged amid the coils of rock.

So many! Hundreds, thousands? Jessalyn feels a thrill of horror.

The prehistoric-looking creatures are of varying sizes, strewn across the terrain. Warming themselves in the January sun oblivious of lizards and crabs scuttling over them. Their hinged mouths are slightly agape, their tongues flick like raw nerves. They are dense-bodied, armored in scales, the largest the size of a Jack Russell terrier. They have survived hundreds of thousands of years and will very likely outlive Homo sapiens, Hector says. Hector seems somewhat bemused by the iguanas, describing their mating rituals. He passes his hand over the eyes of the iguana that Jessalyn has almost stepped on and the creature scarcely blinks.

A rudimentary consciousness, when not aroused to sexual excitement or fighting with another male. The island iguanas appear “tame” but it is misleading to call them “tame”—“They behave as they do because they have no genetic memory of human predators.”

Hector explains that with the exception of the giant tortoises, which will retract their heads into their shells quickly if you approach them, all of the creatures in the Galápagos are indifferent to the presence of human beings, because they have no “genetic memories” of human predators—sea lions, penguins, shorebirds, pelicans.

Jessalyn asks if human beings have “genetic memories” of other human beings, as predators?—and Hector says, with a barking laugh, “But of course, señora. It is hardwired into our brains—what is called ‘xenophobia.’ The Neanderthals lacked such an instinct, and Homo sapiens destroyed them.”

Was this so? Or did the Neanderthals die of other causes also? Jessalyn has only a vague memory from long ago, when she’d been an undergraduate fascinated by natural history, as she’d been fascinated by poetry and philosophy; a long-ago life, scarcely a fossil-memory now, before love, marriage, motherhood had grasped her in their snug comforting coils.

But what a curious world, the Galápagos!—Jessalyn thinks. Like the looking-glass world in which the child Alice wandered into a forest where no creatures had names and where, as a consequence, wild animals like fawns didn’t know that human beings might be their enemies.

Someone in Jessalyn’s group asks if man is the predominant predator of all predators and Hector says no, actually not, in biological terms Homo sapiens is an omnivore, and not a carnivore, capable of living without eating meat if necessary.

In terms other than biological—?

“Well, Homo sapiens is very aggressive. War-making. In that way, predatory.”

Adding then, as if this is a personal, quirky notion and not a statement of the Galápagos Park authority, “And man is a being that looks upward. Always, upward.”

Jessalyn, who has been feeling overwhelmed by the Galápagos environment, feels heartened by this remark. The mere word upward in this barren place is stirring and uplifting to her.

Of course, the Galápagos is hardly a barren place. It is ignorant, short-sighted to think so.

Teeming with life. In the swirling dark waters, teeming with microscopic life. In the sculpted-intestine lava rock, teeming with lizards, hideous scuttling red crabs.

Everywhere you look, shorebirds shrugging their wide wings, quivering with appetite.

Life is appetite.

But is appetite life ?

But where is Hugo?—Jessalyn is missing her photographer-husband. Like several others in the group he doesn’t stay within Hector’s earshot. He is an experienced hiker, the trails are not difficult for Hugo. He is not often beside Jessalyn on a trail for long, for he becomes impatient with the slow pace of the group, and with the often-inane questions put to the tour guide by the other tourists.

Some of these are families, with quite young children. All are earnestly taking pictures, and have to be reprimanded by Hector, from time to time, for drifting off the trail and coming too close to living things.

Jessalyn shades her eyes, peers ahead. Hugo has been hiking up the trail, which has turned steep, and is out of sight. (Not recommended, Hector has warned. Please keep in my sight at all times!) Naively Jessalyn has imagined that she and Hugo would spend time together in the Galápagos, perhaps walking hand in hand—she sees now that this is unlikely.

They are together on the Esmeralda, in their cramped cabin almost too much together, and in the dinghy Hugo sits close beside her, but as soon as the tour group sets out on an island trail, led by Hector, Hugo and a few others (male, of varying ages) are eager to slip ahead, to set their own pace; Hector doesn’t try to rein them in, for they would likely rebel against him.

Of course, Hector respects Hugo: the two men have a rapport of sorts, recognizing each other in a way that circumnavigates the Caucasian-Americans among them. If they wished, they could communicate in rapid-fire Spanish. For a man of his age Hugo is very fit: his shoulders, arms and legs are ropey with muscle, he has been hiking (as he has said) for most of his life, and is usually brimming with energy. He rarely becomes out of breath, he rarely leans on his walking stick. Taking photographs excites him as a hawk is excited by sighting prey on the ground below—he simply must get to it!

But Jessalyn knows, Hugo can become very tired, suddenly; in her arms, he is capable of falling asleep within seconds, as a small child sleeps; a sleep so profound it feels exhausted, stunned. But when he awakens, he is suffused with energy, you might say with himself.

Jessalyn smiles, thinking of Hugo as a sexual being. He is very affectionate, very easily aroused, and very easily satisfied.

And how happy he has been, in this desolate place! Nothing more thrilling to Hugo than to rise early, clamber about on the decks of the Esmeralda to take photographs of the mist-shrouded ocean dawn, as the extraordinary Pacific sky lightens, and climb to the highest peaks of islands to take photographs in places few others would dare to venture.

Jessalyn is exasperated with Hugo, and Jessalyn is very proud of Hugo. She loves him, for Hugo is the most loveable of men, but she is not in love with him. She doesn’t think so.

Or maybe yes, in fact she is. Maybe she has become, these last few days, since the wedding ceremony in the consulate, in love with Hugo Martinez.

As Whitey is less present in her life, Hugo is more present. Whitey is a sun, but a waning sun. Hugo is the new, luminous moon, coming into its fullness.

Without him, where would I be?

Without him to love me, who would I be?

But more, she would have no one to love. Tenderness stirs in her, like life itself. So long as Jessalyn is alive, she must have someone to love and to care for.

She respects women who live alone, who have renounced even the yearning for another. But she is not so strong, she does not want to be a brave widow .

Hugo has forced her to inhabit her body more fully. He has said, a woman must be as fit as a man. More than any man, for a woman will wind up taking care of a man. (This is a joke.) Your soul is not cotton candy to melt in the lightest rain but something beautiful and resilient like silk, he has said extravagantly. But Whitey hadn’t liked seeing his wife struggling with a task, shoveling in the garden for instance, dragging a heavy chair, hadn’t liked his beautiful slender wife panting with effort. Whitey had strolled about the lawn, declining to drag away fallen tree limbs—“That’s why we hire a lawn crew,” he’d said. “That’s why we pay them good money. That’s why we have more money than they do—to hire them, and shift money to them.”