Chapter 5
The island of Dominica rises like a great many-humped green beast out of the blue Caribbean, well down the chain of the Antilles. Trade winds blow steadily; a tropic sun keeps watch; the lofty mountainous spine intercepts rainfall and keeps the island constantly moist. Here in this still unspoiled island the Kaufmanns had assembled a lordly estate. Industry had come to most of the neighboring isles of the West Indies, but the rain forests of Dominica remained as green and glistening as in primordial times, and in its humid lowlands the banana plantations spread from stream to stream. The arrangement, a quasifeudal one, did not greatly please the Dominicans, who hungered for the prosperity experienced by Martinique and St. Lucia and Barbados and the rest. But their island was safe from defilement, whether they willed it or not.
The Kaufmann property lay in the northwest quadrant of the island, between Point Round and the thriving town of Portsmouth. There the family had purchased a series of waterfront tracts encompassing not only a majestic crescent arc of white beach, but also a string of the humbler dark beaches of black volcanic sand. Their holdings ran inland, up the rising slope of Morne Diablotin, Dominica’s highest mountain, and so they sampled the available environments from the dry shoreline to the riverine interior to the mysterious cloud forest of the mountain. It had taken three generations of haggling and title search to put the estate together, and no one could venture to guess what its true value might be in a world where such tracts no longer could be had at all.
Risa liked to think of it as her own property, due to descend to her in time. In fact that was untrue; the estate belonged communally to the Kaufmann family association. It was administered on behalf of the family by her father, but that did not put her in line to inherit it. Each of her many cousins and aunts and uncles and more distant relatives had a share in the property. But Risa thought of herself as belonging to the main line of the Kaufmanns, and since she was her father’s only child, she saw herself as the point of convergence toward which all the family wealth flowed.
It was midday, now: the most dangerous hour under the hostile sun. She stood nude in hip-deep water on the crescent beach, relaxing before more guests arrived. About a dozen were here already. Risa and her father had flown down from New York late the previous night to oversee the preparations for the party. Looking up and don the beach, she eyed the early arrivals. They were scattered like flotsam on the pink-white sand, sunning, dozing. Four Kaufmanns, a pair of Lehmans, and a trio of Kinsolvings. Some of them bare, others-not modest but aware of the esthetics of ungainliness-covering selected portions of their bodies. Not one was less than fifteen years her senior. Risa wished her cousins would arrive.
Turning her back to the beach, she waded seaward. Her body glistened. She had oiled it to protect herself from the sun. Her eyes were lensed against the salt water. She dug her toes into the sandy bottom, kicked forward, and began to swim, cutting a lean swathe through the green, glass-clear water. She liked the touch of it against her breasts and belly. The sunlight made sparkling patterns on the ocean floor, five feet below her. Soon she was past the sandy zone and out above the coral reef that lay a hundred yards off shore. Gnarled, twisted coral heads jutted from the bottom. Fish of a thousand hues danced and played between the stony orange and green slabs. Malevolent black sea urchins twitched their spines hopefully at her. Risa sucked air, dived, plucked a sand dollar from the bottom.
In time she lost interest in the reef. When she swam back to shore, she found that another dozen guests or more had arrivedamong them, finally, someone of her own generation. Her cousin Rod Loeb stood at the water’s edge: eighteen, brawny, tanned, vain. She knew him well and liked him. He wore only a taut red loinstrap. His eyes passed easily over her slender nakedness as she emerged from the water.
“Just get here?” she asked. “Half an hour ago. There was hopter trouble at the airport and we were delayed. You’re looking good. Risa.”
“And you. Let’s walk.” They strolled through the slapping surf toward a cluster of jagged, metallic-looking rocks piled at the north end of the beach. Risa felt the noon warmth probing her skin for some vulnerable place to singe and blister; but the molecule-thick coating of cream protected her. She reveled in her nudity. She broke into a trot, her small breasts barely swaying. If Elena tried to run like this, Risa thought, she’d hit herself in the face with all that swinging meat.
They reached the rocks, neither of them short of breath. The white turrets of barnacles sprouted on the lower surfaces, licked by the waves. Rod said, “I hear you’ve had a transplant.”
“News travels fast if it’s reached Majorca already.”
“Gossip moves at the speed of light in this family. Is it true?”
“Partly. I’ve applied for one. Mark gave his consent a few days ago. I went to the soul bank and tried a few personae out, and on Tuesday I’ll have the transplant.”
“Who’ll it be?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’m deciding between some different types. Whichever it is, it’ll be a girl who died young and sexy. Maybe even someone you’ve slept with.”
Rod laughed. “Is that incest? If you pick up a persona with a memory of having been to bed with me, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care-Is there anything so special about going to bed with you?”
“Try me and see,” Rod said. “Without filtering it through a transplant.”
She eyed his loinstrap. “Right out here on the beach, or should we go to your cottage?”
“Why not right here?” he asked. “All right,” said Risa. She stretched out on a flat palm of stone, flexed her knees, drew her legs apart. Anyone on the beach could see them from here. She propped her fist against her chin. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’m waiting.”
“I almost think you’re serious,” Rod said. “I sin. And you are too, aren’t you? That strap doesn’t hide much. You want me. You’ve been hinting about it long enough. So here’s your chance. Get on top of me.”
His eyes sparkled maliciously. “I wouldn’t take advantage of a child.”
“Monster! I’m past sixteen.”
“Chronologically. But only a child would want to put on a sick exhibition like that in front of everybody. It’s tasteless, Risa. If you really want to have sex with me, get up and we’ll go somewhere private and I’ll oblige you. But just to show everyone that you’re old enough to sin a little—”
“Would I be the first to make love at one of these parties?”
“Stop it,” he said. He swung himself down beside her and lightly slapped the outside of her left thigh. “Can I change the subject? What do you know about Uncle Paul’s transplant? Who’s going to get him?”
Disgruntled by his casual disregard of her wanton mood, Risa closed her thighs and said, “How should I know?”
“The story I hear is that he’s going to go to John Roditis.”
“Not if my father has anything to say about it”
“That would be a blow, wouldn’t it?” Rod said. “Roditis is big enough as he is. With Uncle Paul, he’d be a titan. He’d have the business mind of the century.”
Risa yawned. She swiveled around, dipping her toes in the water. A gray ghostly crab scuffled along the sand and vanished, digging down with startling swiftness. Risa said, “My father doesn’t want Roditis to have Uncle Paul. My father’s a good friend of Santoliquido, and Santoliquido decides. See?”
Rod nodded. “You make it sound very open and shut.”
“It has to be. Why, if Roditis got Uncle Paul, he’d be able to come to our family gatherings, he’d have a wedge right into our whole group. Wouldn’t that be horrible? That nasty, aggressive little man sitting right there on the beach, sipping a drink, making us be polite to him for Uncle Paul’s sake? But it won’t happen.”