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peasants took care of the rest. Lacking electricity, they found other sources of fuel, cutting down anything that would burn, burying it in ditches covered with peat, turning trees into charcoal. One could see sacks of it for sale at the market, stacked in sooty piles. Briquette by briquette, the island turned to ash.
    Everywhere I looked, I saw hilltops resembling the backs of starving dogs, stripped utterly bare.
    â€œWhat is this place?” I asked.
    M. Guinee reached into his pocket and pulled out a key.
    At first, the lock refused to move. Flakes of rust crumbled as I forced the key a fraction of a turn. I nearly lost the skin on my thumb and forefinger. Then all at once it gave. M. Guinee had me open the gate and then close it again once he had driven the car through.
    â€œWhat is this?” I said.
    â€œI already told you.”
    Royal palms lined the driveway on both sides like sentries, rising out of the overgrown grasses. Nothing here was any different from what we had seen along the road. But then we turned a bend in the drive, following the faint impressions left long ago by other cars—or perhaps even wagons—and suddenly everything changed. A vast lawn spread out before us. Beyond it on every side rose the densest forest I had ever seen—like onrushing waves of green. All of it—every last leaf—had been hidden from the road.
    It would be impossible to describe what I saw. It was as though everything formerly growing on the now barren hills had found sanctuary here.
    The drive wound downward, bringing us ever closer, and all around us bougainvillea and yarrow and goldenrod and ferns and a thousand other plants I could not name burst outward against a tangle of trees—sabliers and gumbo-limbos, outstretched mapou and swollen tamarinds, all of it coiled with heavy liana vines—as if the jungle were so overstuffed it might at any moment explode. The landscape was so distracting, so overwhelming, I feared turning my head, lest the jungle instantly overtake me.
    Not until we reached the end of the drive did I finally see the house. M. Guinee said it was a house, but it looked more like a fortress, two stories of stone and mortar built in the colonial fashion, wearing the jungle around its shoulders like a stole. Senator Marcus’s house was dwarfed in comparison.
    Suddenly I felt dizzy, and I realized I had been holding my breath.
    The estate was situated in a valley nestled between the bay and the mountains, the same range that ran the length of the island, bald and gray and lifeless. Later I would learn that when viewed from the bluffs above, the grounds formed an enormous triangle, with the manor house at the base, built close to the cliffs behind it. To the west, the land sloped quickly downward, a series of stairs and stone paths connecting the manor house and the guesthouse to the undeveloped forty-five acres of the forest preserve, which formed the estate’s westernmost boundary.
    The house itself was as much a revelation as the grounds. The portico, three high, sweeping arches held up by columns, led directly into the foyer, no door to seal off the interior from the outdoors. Dirt and leaves and twigs coated the floors, dulling the marble’s shine and texture to the point that it looked like concrete. The chandelier and the broad, winding staircase were encased in cobwebs. We had to stop every second step to swipe them away. Yet, even in this deteriorated state it was clear the house might once have pampered kings and queens.
    With the shutters closed, the second floor was almost impenetrable: mahogany-paneled walls, mahogany trim, oak floorboards grown inky with age. The masonry had begun to crumble. M. Guinee explained the place had been unoccupied for nearly thirty years. I would have believed him if he had said a century. I was afraid to touch anything; I did not wish to cause even the most insignificant harm.
    Back outside, M. Guinee led me to the