Read Online Prospero's Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez - Free Book Online Page B

come to answer your best pleasure, Dr. Gardner. Whether you want me to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the clouds. I come to do your bidding task.” She batted her eyes and swung her hips.
    Mumsford strangled a gasp. He could not believe the change in her. Minutes before she was surly, pouting, refusing to answer him.
    “Moody today, aren’t you, Ariana?” Gardner got up and took the glasses from the tray.
    “Your thoughts are mine,” she said.
    “And so they should be, Ariana.” Gardner stood close to her, so close that he would only have to lean forward slightly and their lips would meet.
    “Tell me your pleasure, my commander. Is there more toil?”
    Mumsford had to strain his ears to hear her.
    “No,” Gardner said softly, his voice a caress. “There is no more toil.”
    Their whispered intimacy embarrassed Mumsford. He flipped through the pages of his notebook, busying himself. The whispering continued, Ariana’s voice gliding seductively across the room, Gardner’s at once gruff and plaintive but so low Mumsford could not discern the words.
    Mumsford coughed again and shifted his body nosily in his chair, but nothing worked. Then, when he least expected it, Gardner’s voice changed from an anxious drone to a harsh whisper and then to a command. “Well, be off with you,” Mumsford heard him say. He caught Ariana’s eyes. There was something curiously submissive in her expression. He had seen that look before—many times it seemed lately— when he apprehended a native: a shading over the eyes that did little to mask fear, feelings of powerlessness, of defeat, and yet somehow beneath the fear, defiance.
    Gardner raised his voice again and ordered Ariana to leave. She threw her head back and walked slowly and deliberately out of the room, tossing her hair over her shoulders and swaying her hips seductively from side to side as if she knew, as indeed it was true, that Gardner’s eyes would be glued on her.
    When the door clicked shut, Gardner explained: “She wants something. They are childish that way. They pout, and when that doesn’t work, they turn on the charm. Soon she’ll sulk.”
    What was it she wanted?
The question formed in Mumsford’s mind, but he knew better than to ask it. The commissioner’s instructions were explicit. He was not to arouse suspicions in Dr. Gardner that Ariana had betrayed him, that the day before she had sent a letter by a boatman with an accusation of her own:
He tell a lie. Mr. Prospero lie.
    “I taught her those words.” Gardner handed Mumsford the glass with the drink the color of orange juice. “Quite an actress, wouldn’t you say?”
    Mumsford brought his glass quickly to his lips to hide his consternation. A performance, perhaps, but more natural than artificial, Gardner’s words about nature and nurture still lingering in his head.
    “Mine is special,” Gardner said, holding up the drink with the bluish hue and regarding it from the distance of his arm. “It’s something I’ve concocted. It builds the mind.” He pointed to his right temple.
    It looked like poison, Mumsford thought, but that was none of his business. Nor was Gardner’s relationship with Ariana. Whether Gardner was putting on his clothes when he came to the door, whether Ariana had been naked and had run to the back of the house to dress, whether she and Gardner had been fucking like pigs, none of that mattered. That was not why he was here. He took two more sips from his orange juice, put down the glass, reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, dabbed his lips dry, and began. “So, sir, back to the business that brings me here.” He sat forward on his chair, his pen poised over his notebook. “Can you tell me, sir, what happened exactly on that day? I am assuming, of course, we are speaking in privacy.”
    “Ariana is in the kitchen.” Gardner continued to regard his drink.
    “Can’t she hear us, sir?”
    Gardner swirled the blue liquid in his glass.