waiting by the boat. She is in it, steadily rowing away from the shore, her head tilted back so that the rain falls upon her small, upturned face. Pudding’s cage sits beside her, the bird’s wings flapping madly.
“Alice!” “Allie! Allie!” Their frantic voices stumble over each other. But Alice keeps her head back. Her mouth seems to be moving, her thin lips forming strange shapes, but Elsa cannot tell if Alice is speaking to them or simply lapping at the raindrops.
6
Greer awoke to the late-afternoon sun filtering through the burlap curtains. She propped herself up against the headboard, knuckled sleep from her eyes. She looked around the dim room—wicker nightstands, cement walls. On the desk opposite her a stack of books rose in an unstable spiral—
Plants of Polynesia. The Settlement of the Pacific. The Theory of Island Biogeography. Textbook of Pollen Analysis.
Ah, she remembered, Rapa Nui.
She stepped out of the bed and pulled back the curtain. A warm glow bathed the courtyard, its eclectic vegetation reminding her of Rousseau’s paintings. Greer once spent a month investigating each floral image in
The Dream
after reading a turn-of-the-century botanist’s paper that accused Rousseau of inventing his tropical flora. “Jungle Jousts and Botanical Brawls” claimed Rousseau concocted aesthetically pleasing plants: broad emerald stalks with giant fronds, white blossoms on velvet-black branches. In
The Dream
, Greer had found a subtropical mimosa branch depicted at ten times its normal size, a Japanese clover blossom, and an agave native to the African desert. The plants were real but the proportions confused, and their biogeographic combination a greenhouse mishmash: a biota worthy of Dr. Frankenstein’s imagination. In fact, that was what she titled her article—“Frankenstein’s Jungle”—which she sent to several botany journals, all of which rejected the manuscript for its lack of scientific relevance. She then sent the article to a dozen art magazines, who likewise rejected it, this time for its inconsequence to art. It now sat in a drawer in Marblehead inside a folder bulging with other articles on hybrid, unpublishable subjects—subjects that, she now knew, once you were established in the scientific community would suggest to colleagues your robust intellectual appetite but, as a young post-doc, simply suggested a lack of focus, and imaginative, perhaps emotional, tendencies.
Greer pulled the curtain shut, lifted the books from her desk, and spilled them on the bed. She’d brought botany and pollen guides; her collections of Darwin, Wallace, Lyell, and Linnaeus; two contemporary volumes on the history of the island with excerpts from early European visitors. But she knew she would need their full accounts. Roggeveen’s or Cook’s journal might, after all, mention the island’s flora. Somewhere in their building, SAAS maintained a good library, but the materials were locked away, and access required paperwork. It would have to wait.
As Greer settled on the bed, her stomach grumbled—she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day’s banana. Now she threw on a cardigan and a long skirt, then stepped into her sandals. Grabbing some of her pollen texts and
On the Origin of Species
—always a good dinner companion—she made her way to the room with the emerald globes. Mahina was nowhere in sight. Greer called her name, then pulled back a beaded curtain behind the desk that revealed an empty office. It was six forty-five, almost time for dinner, so Greer settled into one of the high-backed wicker chairs flanking the card table and reread Darwin’s famous passage:
No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why
“Alice!” “Allie! Allie!” Their frantic voices stumble over each other. But Alice keeps her head back. Her mouth seems to be moving, her thin lips forming strange shapes, but Elsa cannot tell if Alice is speaking to them or simply lapping at the raindrops.
6
Greer awoke to the late-afternoon sun filtering through the burlap curtains. She propped herself up against the headboard, knuckled sleep from her eyes. She looked around the dim room—wicker nightstands, cement walls. On the desk opposite her a stack of books rose in an unstable spiral—
Plants of Polynesia. The Settlement of the Pacific. The Theory of Island Biogeography. Textbook of Pollen Analysis.
Ah, she remembered, Rapa Nui.
She stepped out of the bed and pulled back the curtain. A warm glow bathed the courtyard, its eclectic vegetation reminding her of Rousseau’s paintings. Greer once spent a month investigating each floral image in
The Dream
after reading a turn-of-the-century botanist’s paper that accused Rousseau of inventing his tropical flora. “Jungle Jousts and Botanical Brawls” claimed Rousseau concocted aesthetically pleasing plants: broad emerald stalks with giant fronds, white blossoms on velvet-black branches. In
The Dream
, Greer had found a subtropical mimosa branch depicted at ten times its normal size, a Japanese clover blossom, and an agave native to the African desert. The plants were real but the proportions confused, and their biogeographic combination a greenhouse mishmash: a biota worthy of Dr. Frankenstein’s imagination. In fact, that was what she titled her article—“Frankenstein’s Jungle”—which she sent to several botany journals, all of which rejected the manuscript for its lack of scientific relevance. She then sent the article to a dozen art magazines, who likewise rejected it, this time for its inconsequence to art. It now sat in a drawer in Marblehead inside a folder bulging with other articles on hybrid, unpublishable subjects—subjects that, she now knew, once you were established in the scientific community would suggest to colleagues your robust intellectual appetite but, as a young post-doc, simply suggested a lack of focus, and imaginative, perhaps emotional, tendencies.
Greer pulled the curtain shut, lifted the books from her desk, and spilled them on the bed. She’d brought botany and pollen guides; her collections of Darwin, Wallace, Lyell, and Linnaeus; two contemporary volumes on the history of the island with excerpts from early European visitors. But she knew she would need their full accounts. Roggeveen’s or Cook’s journal might, after all, mention the island’s flora. Somewhere in their building, SAAS maintained a good library, but the materials were locked away, and access required paperwork. It would have to wait.
As Greer settled on the bed, her stomach grumbled—she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day’s banana. Now she threw on a cardigan and a long skirt, then stepped into her sandals. Grabbing some of her pollen texts and
On the Origin of Species
—always a good dinner companion—she made her way to the room with the emerald globes. Mahina was nowhere in sight. Greer called her name, then pulled back a beaded curtain behind the desk that revealed an empty office. It was six forty-five, almost time for dinner, so Greer settled into one of the high-backed wicker chairs flanking the card table and reread Darwin’s famous passage:
No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why
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