Isola

by Allegra Goodman

Patience, excellence, humility.

With all her languages and learning, my teacher could not restore me.

English might board you. Even if they did not, there was the weather, and what then? Tempests rose, and waves breached the strongest hull. Salt water would seep in and sink your vessel with its casks of wine, its spices, and its chests of gold.

Without humility, I watched tenants fill my house. Without patience, I saw the family’s servants overrun our halls;

Vanity, vanity, taught Madame D’Artois. Everything we treasure has a price. And everything we have will slip away. She told us we were dust and our lives brief as grass. We might understand this if we were truly wise—but I lacked wisdom.

“Marriage might be worse.” “Not if my husband prospered.” “A man might prosper and yet injure you.”

stamped my foot because I thought I knew what hardship meant. “We have nothing, and we will have nothing.” “We have books and music,” Claire reminded me. “And food to eat and wine to drink.”

My guardian sat back, surprised. Not angry at such insolence, but amazed, as if I were an animal endowed with human speech.

Like Eden, these islands knew no frost. It was always summer, and trees never stopped bearing. Few men sailed there, and fewer still came home—but this would change. The journey would contract to a space of months, so those setting out might return within the year.

“What do you want to know?” My fate, I thought. My future.

These ships are my inheritance, I thought. I paid for this voyage. And then most strangely, I am the instrument of my own exile.