Left on Paradise (6 page)

The day’s final order of business was conducted just before a late dinner: the colonists needed to divide their territory among the four villages. Ryan used old Russian maps and commercial satellite imagery to divide the island into four quadrants: as equal in their share of land, water, and beach as could be achieved consistent with clearly delineated borders—with the headquarters staff assigned a portion of land large enough to meet its own needs. A copy of the map was cut along the boundaries of assigned districts and the quadrants folded and dropped into the emptied purse of one of the younger men. A representative of each neighborhood took a single share back to the corners of the hall for review by the newly formed villages. With their portions of paradise in hand, neighbors used laminated maps of the island (and felt-tipped marking pens) to plan where to pitch tents and plant fields. A cartographer and two agricultural specialists provided technical assistance in map reading to those whose experience was limited to tourist guides and road atlases.

After a meal of vegetarian burgers and tofu fries, Ryan asked the conclave to consider the drafting of a state charter—recommending that each neighborhood spend the evening formulating key principles by which the community would govern itself. Ryan hoped these could be discussed and ratified the following morning and a new charter then proposed. Following his recommendation, it was suggested that a succinct document along the lines of the French
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
would prove a more useful document than an extensive constitution following the American model. This suggestion was seconded and ratified by unanimous vote of the assembly.

After the vote, everyone rose to applaud Ryan and Kit for their efforts before dispersing into neighborhoods for discussion and debate. Within the hour, casks of beer and cases of wine were opened and copies of political documents distributed for study, though many emigrants soon drifted toward the comfort and companionship of established acquaintances.

Assembly reconvened the following day. Each of the five villages—four territorial and the staff neighborhood—provided ten planks to debate. There was nearly unanimous regard for the rights to reproductive freedom, freedom of association, freedom from religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience—as well as for legal and social equality. A majority of the citizens also accepted that there should be freedom both from conscription and pollution. Proposals dealing with marriage, artistic expression, weapons ownership, drug legalization, and animal rights also were reviewed. Before lunch was served, each proposal was voted into law or removed from immediate consideration. A constitutional committee headed by Ryan was empowered to draft a charter. Though several citizens wished to debate the social theory underpinning the charter, the majority proved more interested in limiting debate to immediate political and legal realities. Thus authorized, the constituent assembly worked through lunch while the citizenry enjoyed leisure on deck. The framers grouped like-minded proposals together, then simplified these to core principles and necessary issues. Afterwards, a political scientist and former writer of campaign speeches for several Democratic Senators and progressive advocacy groups penned a draft of the charter (which was debated and amended within the committee). Finally, the speechwriter rewrote the draft—to which Ryan contributed several stylistic changes. The revision was read before the re-assembled convocation at dinner. Everyone listened with undistracted attention and even the children were unusually quiet.

The Flower of the First of May
Compact,
as the document was called, was accepted almost without amendment. The only real controversy regarded guns. Several activists wanted the possession of firearms explicitly outlawed, but majority spokespersons pointed out the fifth and sixth provisions of the charter were clearly anti-NRA in concept and intent—forbidding militia membership, private gun ownership, and hunting with firearms. Besides, Ryan argued that because no such weapons were to be brought on the island there was very little danger of mischief with guns. He questioned whether the technological know-how even existed for arms production since not a single gunsmith had been selected for citizenship—unless, he quipped, Kit secretly had invited members of the Smith and Wesson families. After loud laughter, the objectors accepted his arguments and didn’t push a vote. Gun ownership was rendered a moot issue.

Of far more critical importance was a debate over Article I—which defined the members of state. Several women wanted confirmation that citizens needed to be born before inheriting political rights, thereby securing a woman’s right to an elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Nearly everyone agreed with their judgment and the assembly voted by voice that the women’s interpretation of the clause was correct, though a few children of former Latino immigrants sought clarification regarding the rights of immigrants. Since the citizenship clause imitated the American Constitution in extending citizenship to the children of citizens and to soil-born immigrants, they feared a class of foreign-born immigrants might be excluded from citizenship on that basis—just as those born in Mexico or Haiti possessed no inherent right to vote in American elections. This modification was greeted with great celebration since it was the first time any government in human history had granted such comprehensive political rights: anyone living among them would be counted a citizen and anyone not living among them would not.

After this final amendment, the charter was voted upon. Everyone eligible to vote (only a few of the younger children were unable to exercise that right) ratified the charter. The constitution read:

The Flower of the First of May Compact

Being willingly gathered together to create a new society, we the undersigned declare that the citizens of the State of Paradise confirm the following principles to be our governing charter:

1. The political community is composed of nothing more and nothing less than free individuals. All persons living in our realm shall enjoy the privileges and exercise the responsibilities of citizenship. No restrictions shall be placed on the right of a woman to terminate pregnancy.

2. No person shall be restricted in the exercise of her or his own choices except to secure the freedom of others.

3. No distinction shall be made between persons before the law.

4. The right to freedom of conscience, speech, sexual preference, artistic expression, public and private association, and due process under the law shall not be curtailed.

5. The public authority shall possess the right to safeguard domestic tranquility and public safety and to regulate all armed and police forces. However, it shall possess no right to suspend, infringe, or otherwise abrogate individual freedoms and rights. There is no right to possess or use any weapon or tool except as authorized by public authority. Military service shall not be made compulsory.

6.
Every person possesses an equal share of nature that is to be used and preserved. The harvesting of natural resources and the taking of animal life shall be regulated by public authority.

7. This compact shall be sworn at the commencement of every public meeting and may not be abridged.

After ratifying the new charter, everyone signed the document with commemorative pens and official copies thereafter were sent to the ship’s captain for delivery to officials in Geneva and Moscow. Unsigned copies were provided to every member of the state and the original draft was safeguarded by the professional staff for permanent archiving.

With a government formed and its ideals established, the community decided it was proper to celebrate—and a party was decreed by unanimous vote. Cases of Napa Valley’s finest wine were pried open and served with hors d’oeuvres. The staff psychologist—a petite blonde in her thirties with narrow hips and perky hair named Janine Erikson—lectured as Chardonnay and Chianti were poured into commemorative goblets. After every glass was filled, she led the toast.

“To our teachers for their wisdom,” Dr. Erikson said. “To Ryan for his vision. To all of us for the courage of our convictions. Cheers!”

“Cheers,” the audience thundered.

Celebrations continued well through the night.

5

Post-California Dreaming

Most emigrants gathered to party in a decorated cargo hold, except for several groups congregated for private celebrations on deck and a few couples who remained in their own cabins or nearby passageways. Among the former were a wiry Asian and his wife—who sipped sodas where the passageway to their room opened to the deck. They stood hidden in the shadows as they spoke in unbroken and unaccented English and occasionally checked into their cabin.

“They still sleeping?” the man asked his wife as she returned from one of her forays into the room.

“They’re still pretending to sleep,” the woman said with a laugh, “but they’re listening to the party. I heard them giggling when I opened the door.”

“I dread the teenage years,” the man replied.

“They’re not here yet.”

“Soon enough.”

“Do you think this will be a good place for them to grow up?”

“Better here,” the man said, “than Inglewood.”

“Or Michigan.”

“You’re right about that, Linh.”

“I always am.”

Now the woman pointed toward the stern. “It’s loud down there.”

Her husband nodded.

“I like the smell of the sea,” the woman said just before she pointed across the deck to a canvas-covered boat nearly as long and wide as a freight car. “Is that an imperialist landing craft?”

“That it is,” Viet said with a laugh. “It’s called an LCVP. They used them at Normandy. And in the Pacific.”

“Vietnam?”

“I read about a couple landings. Not often, though. They had helicopters to use against us.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Us?”

“Well,” her husband said, “against my father.”

“He died an American ally. Like my father.”

“It’s ironic,” Viet said after a pause.

“How’s that?”

“My father fought the Americans and became a boat person to get to the United States. He brought me to Los Angeles and now I’m sailing into the Pacific to escape America.”

“It’s worth a chance,” Linh said. “There’s still too much racism back home. I want our daughters to escape every kind of prejudice: rioters who burn our shops and administrators who stereotype our students and embittered veterans who call us slopes.”

“You’re right,” Viet said after considering his answer several seconds. “I couldn’t get into law school even with straight A’s. Not in California. And it’s the most progressive state in the union.”

“That won’t happen to our daughters.”

“It won’t,” Viet said. “My parents worked themselves to early deaths trying to make a new life for us. They thought they could escape oppression and poverty by coming to a new land.”

“Mine thought they could live the good life in the Midwest,” the woman added, “but all they got was bored. And unemployed.”

“We’re going to do it right for our children. With these people.”

Now Linh said as she pointed toward canvas-covered stacks of crates sitting beside the LCVP. “Are those ours too?”

“And everything,” Viet said, “stored in the two cargo holds, along with everything on the boat. Except for the captain and the crew.”

The woman said nothing as she sat beside her husband, holding his hand. Low-moving clouds obscured the moon and a strong headwind occasionally sprayed a mist of salt-water across the deck as the couple enjoyed the peace. Both husband and wife looked to the sea and their own thoughts as they held hands without talking.

Only after several minutes did the woman break the silence. “What do you expect?” she asked.

“Good people,” her husband answered, “who want to do the right thing. Who live moral lives and care for the world around them.”

“Do you know what I want?”

Viet shook his head.

“I want a life,” Linh said, “where race is never mentioned.”

“We all have eyes.”

“And,” Linh said with a nod, “we all have hearts and minds too. I want to live with people who’d rather read a book than its cover.”

“You have your wish. These people are such a mix of nationalities and races and religions that it’d be impossible to fix a stereotype. If diversity is enough to make a good society, we’ll have the world we’ve always wanted.”

“I’m glad we came,” Linh said, “to a truly new world.”

A few minutes later, the couple retired. As their two daughters finally slept, Linh slipped into a nightgown and lay beside one of them as Viet removed his shirt and took a place on a narrow cot across the room.

A barrel-chested man with thinning, gray hair sat on stacked crates in a decorated hold, sipping a bottle of imported lager. A black-haired woman with high cheekbones and narrow eyes sat beside him as rap music played across the room and dozens of people added to the din with loud talk and raucous laughter. The man focused his attention on the narrow-hipped woman.

“It’s really paradoxical,” the man said, “when it’s considered.”

The narrow-hipped woman laughed. “It is.”

“We have a Russian crew commanded by an American captain being paid in Eurodollars to deliver a hundred benefactors of Anglo-European industrial capitalism to a socialist tropical paradise.”

“One hundred and two,” the woman said.

“Lenin must be rolling over in his tomb.”

“I thought it was Beethoven who rolled in his grave. I’d pay uninflated rubles to see Lenin turn in that glass coffin.”

“Very witty.”

Both laughed as the man drank from his dark bottle of lager and the woman sipped white wine.

“Incidentally,” the man said, “I’m Charles Marks. That’s my wife across the room. In the red dress.”

The woman extended her hand. A small diamond glittered from her left hand.

“I’m Deidra Smith.”

“Children?”

“Someday, I hope,” the woman answered. “How about you?”

“One daughter,” Charles replied. “She’s a high-school senior. Probably sitting in her cabin right now contemplating Plato’s eternal forms or Kant’s transcendent categories. She’s not much for parties.”

“I’ve haven’t talked to you for ten minutes,” Deidra said, “and you’ve already brought up Marx, Hegel, and Rousseau. Not to mention Plato and Kant. I’m guessing she’s her father’s daughter.”

“More like the antithesis spawned by my thesis. I’m a materialist and she seeks transcendence. I’m a realist and she’s a romantic. She’s a wonderful daughter but her mother and I thought it best to bring her to a new environment. She was running with a bad crowd.”

“My sister,” Deidra said, “lost a stepson who got tied up with gangs.”

“Heather was hanging with Young Republicans.”

Deidra shuddered.

“And,” Charles continued, “she threatened to apply to Big Ten schools. Said she wanted to live in the Midwest. Iowa was her top choice. Refused even to consider Berkeley.”

“That is serious.”

“She was likely to end up worse than a neocon.”

“At least,” Deidra said, “there won’t be any of those throwbacks on this island. It’ll be a safe place to come of age.”

“I guess,” Charles said with a laugh, “she’ll come of age in paradise. I should rename her Margaret Meade.”

Both laughed and the conversation wound down. After a time, they wished each other good night and the woman returned to her cabin while the man remained in his chair.

Only when his wife stole behind and brushed the back of his neck with a forefinger did Charles stand.

“There you are, Joan. Ready for bed?”

“It’s late,” Joan said with a smile. “What’d you do all evening?”

“Drank a couple beers, talked some politics, met some neighbors.”

Joan took her husband’s hand. “That reminds me,” she said. “I forgot to pack alcohol. Could you see to buying some? On ship?”

“They’re Russian sailors,” Charles said with a grin. “For certain, there’ll be both booze and a black market.”

Joan nodded as she reached for the cabin door and turned the handle. Tiptoeing into the room, they fell into bed without lighting a lamp or changing to nightclothes since it was late and their daughter already slept.

“She’s so grown up,” Joan whispered.

“She is,” Charles replied. “We’ve done our job. Now she’s a woman and can choose her own values.”

Joan kissed her husband on the side of the cheek and pulled the sheet to her shoulders. Both soon slept as silent as their daughter.

A sharp-faced Caucasian with hard limbs was lying on a bunk, sheets pulled to his shoulders. A light-skinned and dark-haired woman—her curls frosted with gray—reclined beside him, propped on an elbow as she looked at the man. She, too, was draped with a thin sheet. Neither wore clothing and the woman talked loud.

“Does it bother you,” the women giggled, “that … that I’m Protestant?”

Father Donovan shook his head and smiled. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m ecumenical. Served three years as a consultant to the Board of Trustees of the World Council of Churches.”

“What’d you consult?”

“Mostly efforts to reach out to Islamic countries.”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Did you devote yourself to good works there too?”

“I brought paradise itself,” Father Donovan answered, “to the daughters of Muslims and freed them from their burkas—at least for a few minutes.”

“That sounds fun.”

“And it is, too. At least until the first Iranian girl confesses fornication to her father, the ayatollah. Then it’s all fatwas and threats and resignations. That’s when I went to Nicaragua to minister to the proletariat. I spent three years as spiritual advisor to troops trying to flush out Contras. They needed comfort and strength for the tough work at hand.”

Now the woman sat up, her countenance serious and voice soft. Her breasts slipped from behind the sheet and fell forward, though she made no effort to veil them.

“I remember that battle,” the woman said, “back in the States we were trying to prosecute Casey and Reagan.”

“And you just about won,” Father Donovan said, “till fascist public opinion turned in favor of Colonel North. Then it was just a matter of time till the U.S. did to Ortega what it did to Castro and Mao and Lenin.”

“Lenin? What did the Americans do to him? I was taught that Herbert Hoover saved Lenin’s government by sending food supplies that averted starvation.”

“There are U.S. soldiers buried in Archangel.”

“How did that happen?”

“The Bolsheviks killed them.”

“I mean, why were Americans in Russia?”

“Don’t you remember that Churchill wanted to strangle the baby Bolshevism—as he himself phrased it—in its cradle? Fortunately for all of us, the child grew to be a man despite the attempted infanticide.”

The woman pressed herself against the man. “I’ve never met a priest like you,” she said.

“I take religion to the streets.”

“Watch yourself,” the woman said with a laugh. “You didn’t find me on the streets.”

“I meant that I bring religious experience to the people.”

“Bring it to me. Give me some sins to confess.”

“Socialization isn’t sin,” Father Donovan said as he pulled the woman to his side, “and in the spirit of Vatican II, I define my own communion. An ecumenical approach to religion.”

The woman climbed atop the man and pressed closer yet, until the two nearly became one. After they were finished, they slept with their backs touching until they were awakened by sunlight and the sounds of bartering.

The dining room was noisy. Nearly every colonist seemed excited about the nature of the new government and several former scholars and journalists were conducting interviews so that posterity might have a full record of those first few days of paradise. Breakfast added to the excitement as it included croissants and fruit cups served with coffee and tea: the last real breakfast likely to be enjoyed for several months. Young people loitered about the halls and children played on the ship’s deck—where sailors mixed with settlers as smooth-faced deck hands used universally recognized signs to flirt with progressive girls and weather-beaten sailors negotiated trades of cigarettes and booze. Sometimes they bought and other times they sold; either way, the Russians turned a profit.

Inside a main corridor, two men haggled over a bottle. A dark-haired sailor with pocked cheeks and greasy hair shook his head at a pale-faced American who held out a fistful of rubles—which the sailor pushed away.

“Nyet.”

“I don’t understand,” Charles Marks protested. “This isn’t U.S. currency. I bought these from your purser. They’re as Russian as you are.”

The Russian’s eyes flashed and he shook his head vigorously. “Nyet ruble. Nein marks.”

Charles spoke with a lift to his voice. “Nine marks? German?”

“Nyet,” the Russian grew more animated, now waving his arms and speaking with irritation: his words deliberate and broken. “Nyet mark. Nyet ruble. Doe-lar.”