Still, I hadn’t entirely lost that sense of unreality, especially when I found the line of that horizon and searched in vain for any cloud. The British Colonial Hotel sprawled ahead on West Bay Street, white and crisp like a castle made of wedding cake. A breeze came off the ocean, smelling of brine. The sand, oh. How I’d miss the fluid, delicate sand, slithering between my toes. I dragged on my cigarette and stared again at Hog Island, now gilded by the rising moon. The lighthouse twinkled from the western tip. Some Swedish fellow owned the island, an inventor, built the vacuum cleaner and the electric icebox, God bless him. Came here to the Bahamas because of the taxes—the absence of taxes, I should say, and why not? A fellow who invents the vacuum cleaner, he’s done his share for humanity. Let him wallow in profits and buy a goddamn island in paradise and call it Shangri-La. Let him buy the largest private yacht in the world and swan around the seven seas. Wenner-Gren, that was his name. Axel Wenner-Gren. There was a Mrs. Wenner-Gren too. No doubt Mrs. Wenner-Gren was invited to all the duchess’s parties. And she hadn’t even had to invent a solid-state electric icebox! Just to marry the man who had. I tossed my cigarette into the sand and turned to walk back to the Prince George Hotel.

As I reached the base of George Street, I hesitated. Instead of continuing to the hotel, I turned left, walked up the street, past the Red Cross headquarters to stand at the bottom of the steps that led to Government House. Darkness had drained away the pinkness of it, the confectionary quality. A constellation of lights shone through the various windows. I could just make out the guards at the main entrance, standing at brutal attention, and the perfume of the night blossoms, wafting from the gardens behind their wall.

Back in my room at the Prince George, I changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, drank a glass of water, and took some aspirin. Fetched my suitcase from the wardrobe and opened it. There was a knock on the door, not entirely unexpected. I had asked for a final bill from the front desk, as I intended to check out tomorrow morning.

But it was not the bill at all. It was an envelope, addressed in an elegant, calligraphic hand to Mrs. Leonora Randolph. Inside lay an invitation from the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to a cocktail party this Saturday at seven p.m. in the gardens of Government House, to benefit the Central Bahamas Chapter of the International Red Cross Society.

Elfriede

August 1900

(Switzerland)

Two weeks after the encounter in the infirmary garden, Herr Doktor Hermann offers Elfriede an unusual question in the middle of their afternoon discussion.

“Would you say, Elfriede,” he intones, making a bridge with his hands, “would you say that you love your husband?”