Andrea Barrett - Servants of the Map

And so why, Nora chided herself that afternoon, did she persist in thinking of this competent person as a boy? Within a few days, she saw both that he was aware of Elizabeth’s interest in him and lacked any feeling for her. Apparently unperturbed by this, he avoided her when he could. When he couldn’t, he was careful to be polite but cool. Where had he learned that? Nora wondered. Briefly she felt sorry for the girl, whose frequent cough and occasional hectic flushes made her appear to be ill.

Mostly, though, Nora worried about her brother and the inn. That summer, for the first time she could remember, they weren’t booked for the season. New hotels, expensive and spacious, were rising throughout the woods, and for much of July the Northview Inn had only fifteen guests. Nora and Ned spent hours fussing over the books and postponing payments to tradesmen. They printed new handbills; they paid for advertisements in the Syracuse and Albany papers. At dinnertime, she and Ned and sometimes Michael circulated among the three tables that now seated everyone: three, where they’d once had eight or ten.

Too often, Nora saw, Ned kept them sitting with the Vignes throughout the entire meal, asking Clara so many questions that Nora was embarrassed first for him and then for her own younger self. No wonder he’d evaded her, all those years ago. Clara sometimes answered him, sometimes ducked the questions politely. How was it, Nora wondered, that her brother, so reticent for so long, should turn not toward her but toward a guest who still spoke with an English accent?

She watched Clara closely, unable at first to see what had captured Ned’s interest. It had something to do, she thought after a while, not just with the woman herself, but with her husband, Max. From Clara’s reluctant responses, Nora gathered that they’d lived in England when they were young, and that Clara had raised their infant daughters alone while Max worked as a surveyor, and then as a botanist, in the Himalaya. Later they’d emigrated to the States so Clara could be near her oldest brother while Max continued to travel.

“Tell me again what he does?” Ned asked one night.

“He attaches himself to expeditions,” Clara said. “Didn’t I mention that? Government surveying expeditions, private exploring expeditions. Any kind of expedition you can imagine. There’s always a need for someone who can collect and classify plants.”

Nora watched her brother lean forward, utterly absorbed. In the arctic, she remembered, his companions had greedily collected both animals and plants. Perhaps this woman’s stories reminded him of those lost friends. As he began to ask yet another question, Nora interrupted with one of her own.

“What kind of plants does your husband gather?” she asked.

“Oh … mosses from Tierra del Fuego,” said Clara impatiently. “Orchids from the rain forests of Brazil. Tropicals from Java and Guinea and Tasmania — swamp palms, strange bamboos, all kinds of lilies and climbing vines, pitcher plants that eat live insects. The last time I heard from him, he’d found a new kind of pitcher plant, violet with a bright orange mouth.”

She prodded a piece of meat with her fork. “Venison?” she asked. “It’s delicious.”

“Michael brought it in,” Ned said. “He’s an excellent shot. Does your husband have any interest in the mountain plants here?”

Clara shrugged. “I expect he wouldn’t consider these real mountains. Not after where he’s been.”

Elizabeth, who’d been coughing quietly throughout dinner, coughed violently then. When she held a handkerchief to her lips and then hid the folds, Nora looked at her sharply and saw Clara reach for the handkerchief, before pulling her hand back to her own lap.

“I gather wild plants myself,” Nora said, to fill the dreadful silence. “I know a bit about medicinal herbs and roots and I’ve treated our neighbors for years with them.”

“Might you know something to ease Elizabeth’s cough?” Clara said. For the first time she looked directly into Nora’s eyes. “She’s had it for months now.”

Nora described some of the treatments she prepared for the invalids she visited during the winter. “Would you let me try a small experiment?” she asked, looking at both Clara and Elizabeth. “For persistent coughs, I’ve had good luck with a milk infusion of mullein leaves and a few other things, given warm, with honey.”

“We’d be grateful,” Clara said.

Restless herself, Nora blamed the unease she felt through the rest of that summer not just on the inn’s peculiar half emptiness, but also on the three Vigne women, who seemed to unsettle themselves as well as everyone around them. Ned’s interest in Clara continued; Elizabeth still seemed distracted and miserable even after the mullein syrup eased her cough. Gillian was never where she said she’d be. And Clara, who seemed to ignore Gillian’s frequent absences, watched over Elizabeth with unnerving intensity. Yet who could blame her? Nora wondered. Max, who remained in Borneo, had been in Siberia the year before; Clara bore whatever happened to her daughters alone. Perhaps Max’s absence also explained the way both sisters, although clearly devoted to their mother, seemed eager to escape on their own whenever they could. Turning a corner on the porch or entering the sitting room, Nora would glimpse their disappearing skirts. Sometimes she caught the sisters whispering intently. Or Ned and Clara, or Gillian and Michael … after a while, Nora tried simply to avoid them. They were guests; they need not be friends.

When that summer finally ended and the inn emptied out, Nora happily put the Vignes out of her mind. She didn’t think about them again until she opened the workshop door one November day, after the first snow had fallen, and found Michael standing there in a white cloud so dense it seemed to be snowing inside. As she closed the door he brought his right arm down sharply, the thin switch in his hand whistling through the air before striking the bundle on the table. A terrible crack, again and again. He whipped at the form on the table as if he couldn’t see her, white puffs rising into her nose and throat. She covered her mouth with her handkerchief and cried, “Michael!”

Whip, whip, whip.

“Michael!” she called again. Normally his movements were slow and meticulous, his workbench perfectly tidy.

At last he lowered the switch. His face was red, spattered with white. On the table was the skin of a loon, speckled black and white beneath the film of powder. Nora touched a feather and then examined her finger.

“Plaster of paris,” Michael said. He was breathing hard. “It cleans the plumage. I shake off what I can, and beat out the rest. Three or four times and all the dirt and oil and blood are gone and the plaster falls out dry. Could you move?”

He held the skin by the neck feathers and beat it like a carpet, then picked up a finer switch, a thin supple twig, and bent close to the skin. Plaster clung to the sweat on his face and formed a white mask.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“It’s ruined if I don’t get out every speck.” He knocked the skin to the floor, picked it up, threw it back on the table, and leaned over.

“I’ve written her five times,” he said. “She hasn’t answered me once. Instead I get these ridiculous notes …”

“From who ?” Nora said.

“Elizabeth. About what she’s reading, or some opera she’s seen, or someplace interesting her father has been …”

“You’re writing to Elizabeth?”

“Not her,” he said furiously. With a piece of wire he began flicking, fiercely yet precisely, at the the webs of down clinging to the bases of the feathers. “Gillian. She never answers me. I don’t even know if she gets my letters. I write her and instead of answers I get these foolish notes from Elizabeth. About concerts. The trees that grow in the park — what do I care about those things? What does she want with me?”