Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

us to follow them because they protect the wild things from our destruction. The women protect the sea. The men protect the land.
    Mama said that even when you see the Duene you cannot tell which way they are going. They will seem to be running away from you just asthey are rushing forwards to chop you down. Though the Duene will not harm humans who do not harm the land or the sea, it is best to avoid them because one does not always know when one is doing harm. The Duene have no mercy. They will drag you by your hair into the sea. They will pluck your extremities from your body as we pluck petals from a flower for love-me, love-me-not. The Duene do not love us. They love only themselves and the wildness, Mama said.
    Here, she would pause in her sewing to look directly at me. “The wildness is many things besides a gathering of trees or a pooling of water.”
    I came to understand that the wildness could be inside of me.

6.
    Madame Antoinette Bradshaw, wife of Owen Arthur, mother of Eeona, was at the Lovernkrandt house for a ladies’ tea party. Mrs. Liva Lovernkrandt, the wife of the former rum maker, had just returned from a month in America. At the tea she wore a large floppy hat made of what Mrs. Lovernkrandt called felt. Everyone had to lean forward to get a better view of her. She was also wearing a dress without a girdle, which caused her to resemble a sack of yams. Later the women would giggle at her behind her back. But not Antoinette.
    “New York,” Mrs. Lovernkrandt began, pausing to sip her tea, “is the classy capital of this new world.” She rested her teacup into its saucer. “Look, ladies. Look at these classy fashions.” She retrieved an armful of magazines and spread them out on her new coffee table. The other women hurriedly picked up their teacups to make room. The magazines were glossy, with bright colors. The women on the covers wore lipstick that was red, and smiled with big straight teeth all showing. Their skin looked all one pale color, like a skinless Irish potato. They wore high heels. Theyexposed not just their ankles, but their entire calves, their entire knees. On one cover the words “Snag Mr. Right!” were written along the bottom. The model on that cover was displaying a little box held with a garter against her thigh. She was retrieving an actual cigarette out of the box. It looked like she might set the words on fire.
    The women at tea leaned over the magazines but didn’t touch them or open them. Mrs. Lovernkrandt leaned back and gave her guests her floppy gaze. She smiled, but with her mouth closed, more demure than the American women. Then she called for her own maid to bring out the “animal.” It took two people. The maid carried it by one arm and the Lovernkrandt’s man-about-the-house led it by the other. The ladies around the table gasped: “Oh my. Is it alive? Keep it away from me!” But Mrs. Lovernkrandt stood and walked up to the furry specimen. She slipped her arms into its body.
    “Imagine!” she exclaimed. “A coat made from little soft animals. You feel like a Viking lady gliding across the Arctic. And you need one of these with how cold it is in New York City. Colder than Denmark, I’m sure.”
    The other women looked skeptical but Antoinette leaned forward. “What kind of animal is it?”
    “Fur,” said Mrs. Lovernkrandt, and she ran her hand down the front of the coat.
    “What does a fur look like?”
    Liva Lovernkrandt was ready for Antoinette. She knew it was Madame Bradshaw who would be the most curious, the most envious. “A mongoose, Antoinette. Just like a mongoose.” But, oh dear, she was beginning to sweat underneath the coat. Liva slipped out of it and gestured for it to be taken away. “And they have shoes made of snake’s skin and eyeglasses rimmed with the backs of turtles,” she continued, now dabbing her perspiring brow with a handkerchief. “Antoinette, you can only dream. Perhaps next time I depart, I should take the gloves you