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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Troubling a Star
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There was nothing from Adam.
The short trip in the launch was smooth. We were able to wear ordinary walking shoes because this would be a dry landing and we wouldn't have to wade in through the water in our big boots. I wondered if Seth Cook might be at the dock, but no one was there except a couple of sailors to help the older people.
I looked at Cook, who seemed to know what I was thinking. “Don't worry, Vicky. Seth won't come to meet us in a crowd. Wait.”
Angelique and Dick walked together, arm in arm. Dick was leaning on his cane, and Angelique carried their parkas; she wore a cream-colored shirt which accentuated her dark skin, as did the thin gold chain. Her beauty fascinated me because it was casual and unflaunting.
I heard her remark on how very British Port Stanley is, with small houses with flower-filled gardens, and many superb lupines, like the ones Otto had pointed out to me in Punta Arenas. I love lupines, and we have them at home, but these were much larger than the ones in our rock garden. One man who was out digging in his front yard stopped to speak to us and said that the weather had been sleety and horrid for weeks, and this lovely weather had just moved in the day before, and everybody was out taking advantage of it. Nothing we heard or saw reminded us that we were at the bottom of the world just above the tip of South America.
We wandered around for half an hour until it was time for our tea at Government House. As we got up to the big white house, I thought it looked pleasant and rambly. A glassed-in conservatory ran the length of it, and we peered through the panes to see absolutely glorious flowers. There were comfortable garden chairs and tables, and Cook remarked that it was very pleasant to sit there when the outside weather was nasty.
The front door was opened by a white-coated butler, and then we were welcomed by the governor's wife, Mrs. Leeds. We left our parkas in a large dressing/bath room; we really didn't need them, but Quimby had told us it was likely to be cold on the trip back to the ship and advised us to bring them along.
We were led into a spacious parlor, even larger than Aunt Serena's. Mrs. Leeds was tall and slender and gracious and was clearly used to hosting gatherings.
We had been divided into two groups, so we wouldn't be overwhelming, and Cook and I were in the first group. We sat in comfortable chairs and Mrs. Leeds told us a little about the island, and about the Falklands war, and how shocking it was for people to wake up one morning and find armed soldiers in the streets telling them they were now Argentinean and had to speak Spanish. I already had a sense of this very English town, and I tried to imagine the Argentinean invasion happening in Thornhill, and being told we weren't Americans anymore. I didn't think any of our neighboring Yankee farmers would take kindly to having to speak a strange language.
“People are just beginning to feel safe again, after all this time,” Mrs. Leeds said.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a uniformed maid in the doorway. She caught Cook's eye and beckoned. He turned to me, and she nodded. “Vicky,” he said softly, and I followed him out of the room into the hall.
“Sir, Miss Austin, the governor expects you in the sitting room.”
We followed her and saw Otto coming out a door. He looked solemn, if not angry and upset, but when he saw us he broke into a great golden smile. “Vicky! Cookie! Hi! Rusty's expecting you.”
He waved, and we went past him into a small, comfortable room, much less formal than the grand parlor. The governor—I knew it must be he, because he had rusty hair
and a rusty mustache—rose from a leather chair, holding out his hand. “Greetings, Adam.”
For a moment I was startled. Then I remembered that Cook's first name was Adam. The governor took my hand. “And this must be Vicky.”
We shook hands, and Cook said, “Good to see you, Rusty.” I tried to imagine Mr. Leeds in the musical-comedy uniform in Aunt Serena's album and decided he could get away with it without looking idiotic.
He offered me a chair near the fireplace, where there was something faintly glowing and smelling somehow cozy and comforting. “Peat,” Mr. Leeds said. “This is where my wife and I like to sit and read in the evenings. It's really too warm for a fire today, but if we let it go out completely, it's hard to get started again, so I have it banked.”
Otto had talked about peat, and I'd read about peat fires in novels set in England or Ireland, but I'd never seen one before. I could picture the Leedses sitting there with books and cups of tea and relaxing together. I wondered what it would be like to govern a small series of islands like the Falklands where a lot of your constituents would be penguins and sheep.
The governor leaned toward me. “Serena Eddington has written about you most glowingly, Vicky. Are you enjoying your travels?”
“Very much indeed, thank you.”
“I wish you could stay and visit with us for a few days, but I understand that going on south to the Antarctic is the main point of this trip. There's not a great deal to see, but what there is, is spectacular.”
“I'm looking forward to it.”
“Pleasant fellow passengers?”
“Very.”
“An interesting group,” Cook said. “Vicky's already made friends with several of them.”
The governor smiled at me. “Why don't you join your fellow passengers for tea? Adam Cook and I have a few things to talk about.”
“Okay. Thanks. Very nice to have met you, sir.”
I went into the big room just before the last of the cucumber sandwiches vanished, and had a cup of smoky tea, the kind you put milk in. I looked around, but I didn't see Otto. I wondered why he'd been with the governor. Well. If he wanted to tell me, he would.
I heard Mrs. Leeds suggesting that after tea we visit the museum, which was down the street. There was a bus if we didn't feel like walking. Then she said she had a treat for us.
In came the most extraordinary man I'd ever seen. He was very tall and he wore a full-length cape of black-and-white feathers, so that he looked like an enormous penguin. He didn't waddle like a penguin, however, but walked around the room, bowing and smiling, then stood with his back to the fireplace and surveyed us all.
I looked at him. He had a deep white scar slashing across one cheek. Otherwise, the face could have been Cook's. This was Cook's brother, Seth.
“Welcome. My name is Papageno.” He smiled and looked directly at me. “Now, then, Vicky, do you know why?”
We were all wearing our name pins. Even so, it surprised me. He looked at me.
It's a good thing I have a mother who loves music, and whose favorite opera is
The Magic Flute
. “Papageno's the bird man in Mozart's
Magic Flute
,” I said.
Sam said, “Bravo, Vicky,” and I blushed.
Papageno—Seth—took the attention off me by beginning to sing. He had a wonderful deep voice, and I could have gone on listening for hours. Siri was sitting across from me, and her mouth was slightly open as she listened. Benjy stood behind her, one hand lightly on her shoulder.
After a few ballads Papageno said, “One last song. The words may be familiar to you,” and he sang:
I am the root and the offspring of David,
and the bright and morning star.
And the spirit and the bride say, Come.
And let him that heareth say, Come.
And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.
For I am the root,
And the bright and morning star.
I thought of Siri and her song, “Thou canst not stir a flower without troubling of a star.” When I am at home I love to go out after dinner with Mr. Rochester and look at the stars. On the
Argosy
we wouldn't be seeing stars as we sailed farther south because the sky would be light until long after we were asleep. I wouldn't want to live for half the year in
perpetual daylight and never see stars, each one a flaming sun, and each one light-years away. Some of the nearest stars are only seven or so light-years in the past, and some are hundreds and thousands, stars long dead before their living light ever reaches us. If what we do troubles a star, is it in the star's own time, who knows how many thousands of years ago, or is it in our time, when we are seeing it?
“
I am the bright and morning star,
” Papageno finished, and bowed, to much applause. On his way out he paused by several people, usually saying something in a soft voice. When he came to me, he bowed and said, “You may call me Papa,” and slipped a small piece of paper into my hand, very unobtrusively. I opened my hand and looked at the paper, trying to be equally unobtrusive. I expected to see something about meeting Cook, or some kind of greeting, but what I read was: FIRST MAN STILL SAFE NEEDS HELP.
What on earth?
Who needed help? First man?
First man! Adam! Adam was the first man. Was he talking about my Adam? And if he was, why did he give the slip of paper to me, not to his brother?
I looked around and I didn't see Cook. He must still be in the little sitting room with the governor. Was I supposed to give Papageno's message to Cook? Or could the Adam who needed help be Adam Cook rather than Adam Eddington?
Deep in my thoughts, I followed along with everybody else while we were given a tour of the house, which rambled comfortably from one wing to another. I wasn't listening to Mrs. Leeds until I heard her say, “Papa,” and then my ears
pricked up. She was laughing. “Oh, don't tell him I called him that. Papageno is very slow to offer his nickname to people. He's not often willing to sing for strangers, so you really had an unusual treat.”
“Isn't his real name Seth?” someone asked.
“It is. But he says Seth was killed by the seal, and indeed it is a miracle that he recovered, largely thanks to his brother, who came from America to nurse him.”
“Cookie,” Sam said in a satisfied voice, and Leilia smiled and nodded.
Mrs. Leeds said, “If you go to the museum—and I do hope you will, it's truly charming—you may see Papageno there. He's done a lot of work on the exhibitions, and he has some magnificent photographs of penguins. He's a unique person, and he does care passionately about these islands and all of us who live here.”
We said goodbye and thank you to Mrs. Leeds, and as we were leaving, the second group was arriving. I was glad we'd been in the first group, especially if, as Mrs. Leeds had implied, Papageno had gone to the museum and wouldn't be singing again.
As we started out the front door, the butler stopped me. “Miss Austin?”
“Yes?”
“I have a letter for you.” He handed me an envelope, not postmarked, with no address, only my name on it. I took it and followed after the group, several yards behind.
I looked at the envelope, which bore the Government
House crest and return address. I opened it and pulled out a sheet of letter paper and saw Adam's writing.
I scanned it quickly, then went over it slowly, not believing what I'd read.
Dear Vicky,
Thank you for your letters. I think it's probably best if we don't write anymore. We're too young to have a serious involvement, and now that I'm finally off to LeNoir Station I have to put all my energy into my work here. I will always consider you Austins good friends. When you stop off at the station, we'll at least have a chance to say hello. But I hope you agree that we'd better cool it.
Sincerely yours,
Adam
No.
I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach.
Adam's first letters had ended with “Love.” What had happened? What had I done?
I was too hurt even to want to cry.
I
was hallucinating. At least I knew that I was hallucinating, so that meant I had not completely lost touch with reality. I was in Aunt Serena's kitchen and Cook had the freezer door open and it was snowing and it was terribly cold. Cook took the penguin-feather cape off a hook and put it on.
“Cook,” I said, “dear Cook, if you and your brother are crazy, then so am I.”
“We are not crazy,” Cook said. “We are the voice of sanity in a crazy world.”
“Where are your angels?” I asked. “Where are their feathers?”
I jerked awake as I realized I was talking out loud. But I wasn't in Aunt Serena's kitchen. I was still on the iceberg. If I kept on hallucinating, I didn't know what would happen to me. I had to keep sane.
 
If the Adam who needed help was my Adam, how did that tie in with this letter?
There was a horrible finality to Adam's words. I shoved the letter into my pocket.
Then I realized that Sam was waiting for me to catch up with the group.
“Vicky?”
“Hi.” I tried to sound normal.
“What's up?”
“Nothing. Sorry I got behind. Are we off to the museum?”
Sam slipped into step beside me. “Want to take the bus?”
“No, thanks, I'd rather walk. You take the bus.”
“Not me. It's much too nice a day, and it isn't that far.”
We saw some passengers climb on to a small white bus. The rest of us straggled along the harbor road. “Look at those houses,” someone said. “I feel I'm on the route from Heathrow into London.”
“Certainly doesn't look even vaguely Hispanic.”
Jorge, who was walking just in front of us, said, “You know a lot about music, Vicky.”
That was something safe to talk about. “No, it's my mother. She says she'd never do housework without music. She loves
The Magic Flute
and she was playing it last month when she was washing the woodwork and getting ready for Christmas. I guess music has sort of seeped into me without my realizing it.” My voice, which had started out galloping unsteadily, sounded almost normal when I finished.
Sam suggested, “Say, Papageno expected us to recognize that last song he sang. What was it?”
After a pause, Siri said, “The words were from John's Revelation, and I think he made up the melody.”
“John who?” someone asked.
Sam looked at me. “I'll wager Vicky knows.”
I wished he hadn't put me on the spot. “John, from the last chapter of the Bible. My grandfather used to love it. It's full of all kinds of poetry.”
Sam smiled at me approvingly.
Adam's letter was burning a hole in my pocket. But I thought I was acting perfectly normal.
Angelique asked, “Did any of you notice how much Papageno looks like Cook?”
Sam said, “He's Cookie's brother. That's why Cookie's leaving the
Argosy
here at Port Stanley, to visit with his brother, and the rest of us will have to look after Vicky.”
Jorge said, “It will be a pleasure.”
“Not that she needs much looking after,” Leilia said, “but we'll be around if you need us, Vicky.”
“That crazy man sure could sing,” Jack drawled.
Sam gave a short laugh. “Crazy like a fox.”
“You think?”
Jorge cleared his throat. “He's a well-known and well-regarded character in the Falklands. But he is eccentric.”
Greta said, “Mrs. Leeds did seem to have affection for him when she talked about him. By the way, did anybody else get a little note from him, slipped into your hand?”
Greta's words stopped me in my tracks.
Angelique cleared her throat. “I did. I thought it was some kind of joke.”
“What's it say, Angel?” Dick asked.
She shrugged. “It just said, BRING NOTHING IN TAKE NOTHING OUT.”
“Standard orders,” Dick said. “Benjy and the other lecturers have all emphasized that.”
“Greta,” Jorge asked, “did you say Papageno slipped you a note?”
“Yes.”
Everybody looked at her, and several people stopped walking and we stood in a cluster on the sidewalk. Jorge prodded, “What did it say?”
“IF YOU WANT TO HURT SOMEONE GIVE HIM SOMETHING HE WANTS.”
“What?” Leilia questioned.
“Not so dumb,” Sam said.
“Explain, Sam,” Greta said.
“Some people are of the opinion that drugs were introduced into America as a most effective secret weapon.”
“What's that got to do with it?”
Dick said, “It's feeding into the present feeling that we're entitled to have whatever gives us any kind of pleasure. We've become a pill-popping population.”
Leilia asked, “Drugs a problem in your school, Vicky?”
“Sure.” I remembered my grandfather saying, “One definition of hell is having your own way all the time.”
“Did anybody else get a note?” Jorge asked.
I didn't speak. I don't know why. I couldn't.
“Remember,” Siri warned, “Papageno will probably be at the museum.”
“Wearing all those feathers?” Greta asked.
“Who knows?”
“Don't Maoris wear feathered capes?”
“Papageno's from the Falklands, not New Zealand.”
Papageno's message to me was in my pocket with Adam's letter. Maybe I wasn't the only one to keep my mouth shut. At least this conversation had shifted Sam's attention from me. All I wanted was to go away from everybody, crawl into some small cave, and lick my wounds.
But I had to endure going to the museum, which was a small frame house filled with Falklands history, mostly focused on Port Stanley. All kinds of artifacts had been saved: teacups, chamber pots, primitive dentist's instruments, kitchen utensils; mostly, someone remarked, things which would have been found in any house in rural England a hundred or so years ago. There were photographs of the ships on which people had arrived, and of some of the early farmhouses on the “camps,” as the islands with the sheep were called. Lonely, terribly lonely.
I put myself on automatic pilot, and noted a stuffed fox, and a strange fish mounted in a glass frame, a fish which seemed to have no red blood corpuscles at all. It was completely colorless and slightly transparent. “It has to be, to survive the Antarctic waters.” Sam was beside me, and I had a feeling he was deliberately staying with me.
He took me by the arm. “Look. Here's Papageno.” We walked to a room which was a combination office and lab, where Papageno was standing by a wide work shelf, mounting some beautiful photographs of penguins. His feathered cape
was hanging on a hook in the corner, and he wore ordinary jeans and a blue knit vest over a white short-sleeved shirt. I could see that his arms were raked with scars.
“Well, Miss Vicky,” he said softly, “it is good to see you.”
I was about to ask Papageno about his note, but several other people came in. Leilia asked Papageno if these were new pictures he was mounting, and he answered that he'd taken them only a week ago, and went on with his work.
Angelique commented, “We've seen a lot of penguins in a couple of days. I'm far more entranced by them than I'd expected to be.”
Papa nodded. “Um.”
Siri asked, “They're doing okay, aren't they? I mean, holding their numbers?”
“Increasing.” Papa looked up from his work. “Anybody know why?”
Leilia replied, “Whales. There are fewer whales than there used to be. They're a frighteningly endangered species.”
“What's that got to do with the penguin population?” someone asked.
Leilia said, “Fewer whales means more krill for the penguins to eat.”
Papageno asked, “Why do you think cetaceans gave up the hand with its opposable thumb and the ability to pick things up and look at them, and went back to the sea?”
Jorge said, without hesitation, “Food. Food was more plentiful in the water than on land, and there were fewer predators.”
Papa said, “A reasonable answer. But possibly not the only one.”
Leilia smiled at him. “Agreed. Whales and dolphins seem to me to be way ahead of us on the evolutionary scale. But I guess nobody'll ever know.”
“Not unless we learn the way they think,” Papageno agreed. “And probably not then. We human beings, for instance, will never know what made us choose to get up off all fours and stand on our hind legs, thus freeing our forepaws to pick up something.”
Leilia nodded. “And so we have the hand with the opposable thumb.”
Papageno took another photograph and started work on it. “It is a good and chastening thing that the human being knows a great deal less than we thought we did a hundred years ago.”
Jorge and Dick challenged that, and I heard Angelique whisper to Leilia, “That's something doctors are afraid to admit. Granted, medicine has come a long way, but …”
I turned away and lost track of the conversation, because I'd shoved my hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched Papageno's slip of paper and Adam's note.
When I tuned in again, it was into a discussion of waste disposal, not only in Antarctica, but all over the world. Someone mentioned hypodermic needles that had been washed up onto beaches a few summers ago. Someone else talked about sewage.
Dick asked, “What about sewage at the research stations?”
“It is collected in large containers,” Papageno said. “It doesn't pose the danger of other waste.”
“Such as?”
Papageno shrugged. “Materials with long half-lives.”
“You mean nuclear waste?” Leilia asked. I thought of Suzy talking about Ned's concern over disposing of nuclear weapons because of the plutonium and uranium.
“Um.”
“Right,” Leilia said. “In Alaska we don't want any leftover nuclear matter dumped on our glaciers.”
Papageno bent over his photos, held up one of what looked like tiny dolphins leaping in unison.
Angelique exclaimed, “I've never seen such small dolphins.”
“Chinstrap penguins, not dolphins,” Papageno corrected her. “But you're not far off, because it's called porpoising. I think that porpoises leaping should be called penguining.”
I'd seen pictures of chinstrap penguins at Aunt Serena's, well named because they have a black line like a chin strap below their beaks.
Siri said, “Your pictures show us what Benjy meant when he talked about penguins flying in water.”
Angelique asked, “Were penguins like porpoises, land animals that went back to the sea for food? That's where they get their food, isn't it, not on land?” Papa nodded, and she went on, “Are they land animals or sea animals? They breed on the land, but eat from the sea. They waddle on land, and fly in the water.”
“If penguins swim like porpoises,” Greta suggested, “and get their food from the sea, are they cetaceans?”
“Penguins are birds,” Papageno said.
Quimby came in and told us it was time to get back to the
ship, and herded us all out like a bunch of sheep. As we left, Papageno said softly, so I think only Sam and I could hear, “The world's waste cannot be disposed of easily. Nor can greed, nor lust for power. It is nausinious.”
Sam whispered to me, “What did he say?”
I whispered back, “I thought he said nausinious, but he must have meant nauseous.” Or was it another warning?
“Where's Cookie?” Sam asked.
“I don't know.” I hadn't seen him since I'd left him with the governor. I needed to talk to him. I couldn't just get back on the ship without saying goodbye, without telling Cook about Papageno's note.
“Don't fret,” Sam said.
And then I felt a hand on my shoulder and Benjy was behind me. “Get on the launch, Vicky. Cookie'll see you later. Don't worry.” He nodded affirmatively, and I got into line, Sam standing right by me. Greta and Jack were in front of us.
She turned to smile at me and asked, “What was Cookie doing with Governor Leeds?”
“They're old friends,” I replied.
“I noticed them as we walked past that little sitting room.”

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