Anita had read and reread her notes until she knew them by heart. She had visualized everything, ticked all the boxes, in the hope of filling the empty spaces in her head and her heart, but she would never know everything.
She would never know how her father had observed the dawn slowly rising above the eucalyptus and mango trees. She would never know how much he had thought about her when the sunlight glowed on the dahlias, the zinnias, the hollyhocks, the pansies, the orange crocuses, the snapdragons, the viburnum, the frangipani tree, the arbor covered in white bougainvillea, the three steps leading to the veranda, the dog. She would never know what his last thoughts were before that terrible roar obliterated everything.
On the fourteenth day, she came back home and called out to her mother, who did not hear her. Then she went into her parents’ bedroom and there, placed on her father’s desk, she saw the panama hat for the first time. Something gave way within her and she began screaming.
Sarita, her mother, was under the mango tree, comfortably ensconced in an old wicker rocking chair, and was watching Adam repairing the other four armchairs in the set. She and Philip had bought this furniture long before Anita’s birth, long before sofas covered in velvet or leatherette had begun to fill up living rooms. The previous day Adam had spent long hours with the village carpenter and now he was scraping, varnishing, adding strips of bamboo to the bases, strengthening the legs with scraps of wood. He worked with a dexterity that his stature would never have led one to expect. His big hands, his broad shoulders, his immense legs—how did he manage to coordinate them with this mixture of grace, efficacy, and intelligence? He had dyed two bundles of raffia with indigo blue (he had told her that in French this was also called Indian blue)—what was he going to do with it? Sarita watched him with that mixture of wonder, nervousness, and curiosity normally reserved for newborn babies. During the previous thirteen days Adam had been discreetly taking things in hand: repairing the drainpipe; rubbing down the wooden balustrade on the veranda and painting it red; oiling the entrance gate; trimming the bamboo hedge; pruning the bougainvilleas; digging out weeds; mowing the lawn; fitting new padlocks; cleaning out and repainting Dog’s kennel. He would start in the morning, once Anita had gone out, and he worked with assurance, unhurriedly, as if he had always been familiar with the local materials, the local ways of doing things, the local flowers and plants. At first Sarita followed him with her eyes and kept her distance, then she would venture an opinion (red rather than blue for the veranda), a piece of advice (better to buy the padlocks at the second hardware store rather than the first). Finally she would go up to him to give encouragement, to offer him a drink, to ask him if he preferred his fish well fried or just lightly, to suggest that he have a rest, go swimming, take a walk. She was aware, even as she counted off the minutes, hours, and days that now lay between her and her husband, even though in the evenings a great gulf of grief and loneliness opened up, even though despair and helplessness overwhelmed her when she saw Anita going out every morning, she was aware of the good this young man was doing her.
Sarita and Adam were in the garden when they heard Anita’s cry. They looked at one another but were not surprised. Simply relieved. They had never mentioned it, but while Anita was going through the same actions over and over again, following the same path back and forth, asking the same questions again and again, reading and rereading her notes, the two of them, each in their own way, in their heads, in their hearts, were waiting for her grief to come, for her tears to flow, as one waits for a ripe fruit to fall of its own accord.
As Sarita went into the house to take her daughter in her arms at last, Adam went back to work. He threaded the strands of raffia in and out of the bamboo, and caught himself thinking that he was using the same actions here, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, as his father, when he was repairing the tarpaulin that protected his supply of logs back at home, on the shores of the Atlantic. This notion gave him a pleasant feeling of fulfillment. He felt rooted in the earth—over here or back there, it was all the same. As his hands worked without stopping, following the blue raffia, in, out, in, out, the notion itself was embodied within them, and it was as if he were working with water, sand, salt, earth, wind, and sky.
Later on, during the night, Sarita heard the floor creak. Something infinitely discreet like a grasshopper’s feet on a mango leaf. Sarita recognized her daughter’s footsteps as she went to be with Adam in his room (the same tiny sound as when, in childhood, she had gone to finish off the chocolate cake in the fridge or to wait outside the door for Santa Claus). She smiled.
Three months later, in her bed, Anita is breathing deeply. She no longer wants to weep for her father, for the time being she no longer wants to think about her island. There is this new life making itself known, this warm and sweet aspect of existence, she wants
