Twenty-Four
The Empress of Floreana
Once the Velero departed Floreana, Dore attempted to have a serious conversation with Friedrich about the Baroness. As she had come to expect, Friedrich dismissed her, calling the situation “women’s bickerings” and urging her to stay on pleasant terms for the sake of everyone on the island.
“She is not harmless,” he admitted, “but she is not so very dangerous either. Only one thing you must remember—she has come here to make her fortune by fair means or foul, and she is a determined person. She will sooner push us off this island than we her, because we are less ruthless than she. Open war could only mean our leaving. The choice lies entirely with ourselves—in fact with you, Dore. Is Friedo worth this effort of self-control to you?”
“How can you ask?” Dore said.
“Very well then, we must act accordingly. And I don’t believe that she will be here longer than about another year at the very outside. We can well afford to wait.”
Privately, though, Friedrich was equally troubled by the Baroness; if the two had once engaged in a love affair, it was by now certainly over. But he did not share his concerns with Dore. Perhaps he believed that such a confession—to a woman, no less—would be perceived as weakness. Instead he disclosed his fears in a letter to Hancock, whom he had come to view as his closest confidant:
My dear Captain Hancock:
You know I can bad [sic] express my thoughts and feeling with speaking, therefore I must do it in writing—to show you my reaction to physical events…. I think it is evident enough that I searched really for solitude. The fate let me not find it. My own “karma” seems to be too “Faustian” to find the quiet I searched for. Surely I had here my happiest days. But fate approached. Supported by the Ecuadorians, the Baroness came to drive me away here and to take the place. First I hoped she would fail, because I thought that the Americans would slightly see through her intention—but now I see that she is very successful, and the island itself is too “small” for her purposes and my world…. I know I would never be victorious against somebody whose instinct and experience in handling men and circumstances is so routine.
After a Nietzschean digression about following a higher law, his personal ego and impersonal self, and his subconscious desire to abandon the “material disorder” that currently afflicted his life, Friedrich got to the main point of his letter:
I hope you know you understand me better than anyone else in the world. To everyone who understands me I can open my “heart”—but it is a shame to prostitute his soul to all people.
In Friedrich’s obtuse, circuitous manner, he was sending Captain Hancock a private and desperate signal for help.
On Sunday, February 5, four days after Friedrich wrote his letter, the Baroness and Robert Philippson arrived at Friedo unannounced, a visit Dore would recount in her memoir. The Baroness made small talk, refusing to expose the purpose of her visit, but she soon sliced through the pretense. “Too kind of you to have sent fodder to my donkeys at the Bay,” she said. “I suppose that Captain Hancock thinks your kindness to animals most awfully touching—it’s not a bad trick.”
“Captain Hancock,” Dore said, “saw that those poor beasts were almost starved to death, and asked me to send them down some sugarcane. As for the rest of your remark, I prefer not to have heard it. But at any rate, if Captain Hancock thinks I’m decent to my animals, he could hardly think the same of you, after seeing the state that yours are in.”
The Baroness laughed. “Oh, not at all, my dear,” she said. “He was absolutely horrified about the poor things. But he doesn’t for a moment believe that I had anything to do with them. I told him they were yours.”
Dore was shocked into silence.
“You’ll have your work cut out explaining that away to him, won’t you?” the Baroness asked.
Robert, too, was silent, standing at the Baroness’s side.
“I think it might be just as well,” the Baroness continued, “if you confined that extreme kind-heartedness of yours to animals. It’s a lot safer.”
Dore at last found her voice. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The Baroness clarified: it would be advisable, in the future, if Dore would concern herself only with animals—and not the state of Rudolph Lorenz’s health. “Of course, we found your interest very touching and all that,” she added, “but it’s after all none of your business. Or are you perhaps in love with him?”
“If you have come to my house to insult me, Frau Wagner,” Dore said, “I think perhaps you’d better go before I ask you to.”
The Baroness laughed and then pivoted: “Your Captain Hancock is very generous to his protégés.”
“Friedrich and I are nobody’s protégés,” Dore said, “but Captain Hancock has been very kind to us.”
“He was simply charmed with my place,” the Baroness said. “When he comes back we’re going to make a film.”
“Indeed?” Dore asked.
“Yes. It’s to be called The Empress of Floreana. That’s me.”
“I wasn’t aware of it,” Dore said. “Have you bought the place by any chance?”
“No, but the aristocracy are the natural rulers of the places they come to. It’s in my blood—you wouldn’t understand—it’s a feeling one has to be born to…. But please don’t be afraid that I’ll put on airs with you. I’m really very democratic, and have always got on excellently with the common people.”
Dore had had enough. “Oh, my dear woman,” she said. “We’re not acting in your film. You know I don’t believe you’re any more a Baroness than I am!”
Robert interrupted. Turning to the Baroness, he said, “Come, little one.”
Said this young man to his mistress of forty-four, Dore thought. At that moment Friedrich appeared. As the Baroness ranted and cursed at Dore, even calling her a vulgar epithet, Dore took immense satisfaction at Friedrich’s shocked expression. “It astounded him,” Dore witnessed, “and made him blush for her. He was offended and uncomfortable.”
Dore told herself that she—and not the Baroness—had won that round. And, Dore would discover, she had been right to worry about the Baroness’s donkeys. One developed a sore on its back, which the Baroness fatally treated with carbolic acid. Another died after she had forgotten to feed it. A third refused to come when she called it, and was shot dead for its defiance.
A few days later, after checking for mail at Post Office Bay, Heinz dropped by Friedo and shared his own frustrations. While making a cradle for baby Rolf, he managed to break both his toe and his only drill. Did Friedrich have one he could borrow? Friedrich did not; he only had one of his own and needed it. Also, despite Captain Hancock’s wise advice, the hens were still eating every egg they hatched. Worst of all, he and Margret had been awaiting the delivery of forty tins of condensed milk for the baby; they were nearly out of their supply and growing desperate. He’d considered approaching the Baroness to ask if he might buy some milk and was even willing to pay her extortionist prices—but then remembered that her cows were starved to near death and wouldn’t be able to produce one cup between them.
Friedrich mentioned the many gifts Captain Hancock had given to the Baroness. “Among other things,” he said, “there was a whole crate of tinned milk for your wife, so that she should have a good reserve for herself and the baby.”
Heinz was livid. It was one thing for the Baroness to steal his rice, but now she was stealing gifts meant for his newborn son. After consulting with Margret, he called upon the Baroness and asked, politely, if she had the milk that Hancock had left for them. She produced one tin.
The Baroness’s transgressions disturbed Dore even when she was not the intended target. Friedrich, infuriatingly, still did not take her concerns seriously. She could not burden Heinz, who was rightfully concerned with his own family’s survival. And she could not consider confiding in Margret, who, in Dore’s opinion, was “an ordinary type of woman and a great gossip”—not someone she would trust with her most personal thoughts.
Dore’s gravest fear, however, was that she was failing at the very task for which she’d sacrificed her life: helping Friedrich reach the highest echelons of his own humanity, achieving the status of the Übermensch. Like Friedrich, she chose to confide in Hancock, trusting that he was the one person who would understand the severity of her despair. Shortly after the captain’s visit, she sent him a letter:
My dear Captain Hancock:
You heard the doctor often say we must live more simple, more unassuming lives. I did not help in this direction…and in remembering how much I swerved from the truth and the spirit we had perceived once and understood, my soul is weeping for shame and remorse….
I know that I shall not live a long life. But I will use my time. I will be thankful that I could make the acquaintance of the “Baroness.” Is she not like a mirror to show me the world, which lies behind me, so far away, that I could learn how impossible it is to go back to my country—not for months, not for weeks, not for days.
Is she not like a snake to hurt my soul and put bad thoughts in my mind?
She signed off by stating her new aspiration: to “overcome the material world” and rise above her own alarming—and dangerous—“animal” instincts.
Even Dore now worried about losing control of everything.