Gardens in the Dunes (52 page)

Italy was the best place to get lost in the summer if you were a parrot, she thought. To be lost in the sweltering dunes above the red muddy river of home might kill a parrot; she must teach him not to fly away before she took him to the old gardens. Great horned owl and redtail hawk and golden eagle all would love to taste a parrot.

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They checked out of the hotel before dawn to take the train to Cervione; Indigo moved like a sleepwalker and still refused food, though she did take water. Before they left the hotel Edward gave the concierge some coins and the man disappeared into the hotel kitchen; he returned with a burlap sack of potatoes, which Edward tucked into the shipping crate with the camera. Hattie wanted to ask him what he meant to do with the potatoes but decided to wait until he seemed less preoccupied.

The other private compartments on the train were unoccupied, and the conductor who came to take the tickets seemed surprised to see Americans. The only signs of civil unrest they'd seen were a few soldiers at the street corners. The newspapers that Laura consulted before their departure reported no incidents in Corsica. Hattie settled back in her seat and closed her eyes; the motion of the train and its rhythmic creak and clatter enveloped her and were oddly soothing. She was so pleased to have met the
professoressa
, as gracious and generous as she was interesting; Hattie wished they had had more time in Lucca; they barely got to see the artifacts in the gardens, much less discuss the significance of each figure. Hattie wished she had asked about the luminous glow of the white snake goddess. If she got to know Laura a little better, Hattie thought, she might confide about the strange light, the odd luminous glow she saw in Aunt Bronwyn's garden.

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.

The coolness of the tile floor felt wonderful on Hattie's bare feet—no wonder Indigo was able to sleep while she and Edward tossed and turned. For an instant she thought how easy it would be to take a sheet and pillow to the floor to sleep, but of course that was silly.

Hattie was less concerned about Indigo's health after she finished her
soup and bread earlier in the evening, but the child still refused to speak or make eye contact. Hattie missed the lively exchanges she and Indigo had, and the child's vibrant reactions and questions about the places and people they saw. Surely someone would find that parrot for the reward! If only their schedule had permitted them another day in Livorno, they might have searched for the bird themselves. Hattie sighed; she was beginning to weary of travel. A day of rest from travel would benefit them all.

Edward got up a little after daybreak while Indigo was still asleep. To Hattie's annoyance, Edward at once began to fuss with the camera case and bumped the floor hard with the tripod. Hattie expected the noise to wake Indigo, but she scarcely stirred in the alcove. The poor child was worn out!

“I think I'll stay here today with Indigo and rest,” she said. Edward did not disagree, but as he went on with his repeated repacking of the camera case to ensure against breakage, he pointed out that the hotel dining room was closed for the summer; they'd have only soup and bread again. Moreover, the hotel had no garden for shady walks, only a paved courtyard with some pots of withered dahlias in full sun. The mountains would be much cooler and the mayor's brother promised a home-cooked meal at his house in Borgo; the fresh air and exercise would be good for all of them.

When Hattie woke her, Indigo had just reached the Sea of Galilee, which looked like the river at home, only many times wider and surrounding everything; in her dream, Rainbow was on her shoulder and Linnaeus frolicked along the rocky seashore, whose stones and pebbles were the same colors of pale yellow and pale orange as the stones along the river at home. Up ahead in the distance she saw the white cloaks of the dancers as they lined up to get the sacred red clay dust. When Indigo woke to see that she was back in the hotel room with Hattie and Edward, she burst into tears.

“Why did you have to wake me right then?” she cried in anger. “I was almost to find them!” Hattie felt a surge of compassion in her heart for the child, followed by righteous anger at Edward. They had not argued with each other before, but Hattie was fed up; if he had not insisted on such a haste, the child would behave much better, and so would she!

Edward countered if Indigo were not so spoiled and so stubbornly convinced the parrot would never be found, she might be tolerable. He looked at the child. Pet parrots were lost and returned to their owners every day, all over the world, he said to the child; but Indigo covered her ears and refused to hear of it. An outing in the sunshine and fresh air was just the tonic Indigo needed.

Indigo sat motionless with her eyes closed as Hattie tugged off her
nightgown and put on her cotton slip and blue gingham dress. With her eyes closed she could visualize the desert seashore of her dream that took her to Galilee, where Jesus and his family and followers were camped. She didn't care what Edward or Hattie thought; she squeezed her eyes closed and went over the dream again and again until she was confident she could return to the same place in the dream tonight; then she opened her eyes and saw both Hattie and Edward were irritated by her behavior. Good, Indigo thought; maybe they'd find a train and send her back to Arizona.

They got a late start after the mayor's brother had to shoe one of the horses, and the heat rose in waves from the dirt road ahead of the buggy while the dust swirled all around. The ragged buggy cover gave only a small area of shade that left the lower legs and feet in full sun. Hattie found the rolling hills with the terraced fields overlooking the sea strangely appealing in their solitude.

In the heat of the day, they were the only beings that moved along the road. The blazing full sun at midday was entirely too strong for good photographs, but they were passing into the first of the citron groves, so Edward asked the driver to stop. He got down from the buggy and approached the odd pole frame that enclosed the tree—to train it to grow in a vase form, to give the branches the right spread, the mayor's brother explained in an odd mixture of Italian and French. Edward noted how the right spread of the branches enabled them to hold much more fruit without breaking. He restrained the urge he felt to pick one of the small thick-skinned “lemons” and pretended to study the vista of dry rocky hills in shades of umber and sienna streaked with olive and the citrus green of the orchards, framed by the cloudless azure sky. He easily could have taken all the cuttings he needed right here, but he hoped to find a more discreet opportunity.