After about a year of this settled life, one morning in mid-November, Wilson went out to the mailbox on the main road and found an unusual letter included with the usual junk mail and business correspondence. This letter, forwarded to him from his publisher, came in a thin envelope of coarse blue paper, torn at the edges and covered with a half dozen colorful stamps from the Republic of Madagascar, that odd paramecium-shaped island floating in the Indian Ocean off the southeast African coast. There was no return address.
A cold rain fell on the stubble fields as Wilson spread the mail across the kitchen table in the farmhouse, his heart beating. He took the blue letter and turned it over in his hands. The faucet dripped portentously in the sink behind him. The old house creaked in the wind. A pleasant yellow light came from the window of Andrea’s studio in the barn. Wilson slit the envelope with a kitchen knife. As his heart had told him, the letter was from Cricket. Also enclosed was a small photo-booth photo of Cricket holding on her lap a young boy, roughly four years old. The child, as was plain to see, had Wilson’s nose and mouth, Cricket’s green eyes and high cheekbones and mop of coppery hair. The rain picked up on the old slate roof and the attic began to leak as Wilson squinted at Cricket’s crabbed, obscure handwriting:
Tananarive, 16 May
Dear Wilson,
I saw your book at Battingly and Sons, the English bookshop in Nairobi, last week. I didn’t buy it, I don’t want to read the thing. But I made note of the publisher and hope they will forward this letter to you because I have some interesting news. You have a son, who I named Elzevir after my father and my ancestor, the great pirate. He was born on March 3, about nine months from the night we made love aboard the Dread on Lake Tsuwanga. I was pregnant when you marooned me on that miserable sandbar, though I didn’t know it at the time.
The boy is wonderful and strong and looks just like you. He has your mannerisms, despite the fact he has never seen you—and I’m also afraid he has your scruples. But he has a lot of years ahead, and we will make a proper little pirate out of him yet. I want you to understand this not to hurt you but to let you know that despite your treachery, our way of life continues. A half dozen of our ships were at sea when the British attacked—six captains and five hundred men. We have founded a new colony somewhere in the vicinity of Madagascar—obviously I’m not going to tell you where—and more join every day to serve under the good old skull and crossbones. You always loved order and the dull charms of middle-class life. I never did. The only way to stand that kind of existence is to swallow so much Prozac you don’t feel your own rage and hope. I prefer fire and the sword, so to speak, and always a sail on the horizon.
Still, having said all that, I want you to know that I do miss you and—call me crazy—would like to see you again someday. And I would like you to see your son. Three months out of the year, during the rainy season I am in Paris, usually starting April 1. I bought that gloomy apartment on the Ile St.-Louis, and there is plenty of space for you and your books there. You may contact me through my lawyer anytime: M. Gustave Leconte, 8bis Rue Lamartine, Paris 00017 FRANCE. Think about it.
Love, Cricket
P.S. Remember that mark on your shoulder? According to the Articles of Brotherhood and according to my heart, it means you are mine forever. XOXO—C.
Wilson read Cricket’s letter four times, and he studied the photograph obsessively for half an hour. His hands were trembling, his neck was cold with sweat, and suddenly there was a slight briny smell in his nostrils and he closed his eyes and saw the green waves crashing against the side of a ship, the horizon wild with storm, the black flag flying like a curse from the topgallants as a pirate wind rose out of the south. He shook himself away from this vision and went out into the yard and stood there till he was good and soaked and he could smell the wet earth and the horses in the stables and all thoughts of Cricket and the sea had been washed from him by a clean, forgiving rain.
Wilson did not go to Paris that year. He did not go the year after. True, some nights, sleeping next to his wife in bed beneath the beamed ceiling of the farmhouse, he awoke from a dream of Cricket’s skin against his own, and it took the entire force of his will to keep him there, to keep him from the midnight roads of Warinocco County, from the airport and the next flight across the Atlantic to Paris, and thence the wilds of Madagascar. Still, he did not go—it is almost certain he will never go—but who can say?