Isle of Passion (36 page)

“What you are proposing, ma’am, sounds good to me,” he said. “For us to become husband and wife, both to be governors, and to live in peace. What I don’t understand is why now, when you never wanted this to happen before.”

“I always treated you right.”

“Yes, in a condescending way. But you never treated me like a man.”

“I had my husband, Victoriano, and I loved him very much.”

“But then you became a widow, and you didn’t change.”

“Then I had the baby, and besides, I was in mourning.”

“Are you through now?”

“I think so.”

She noticed that Tirsa had stood up, walked away, and was moving her hands behind her back. Alicia guessed she was pulling loose the mallet secured with a rope, and made a superhuman effort not to follow her with her eyes so that Victoriano would not turn around.

“And your children, will they accept me as their father?” he asked.

Alicia had begun to tremble, and her mouth turned dry. “If you treat them right, of course—” the tension strangling the words in her throat as she felt Tirsa’s shadow approaching.

If I look at her now, Alicia knew, Victoriano will kill her. But her eyes did not obey and moved on their own, her pupils dilated, fixed on the mallet that Tirsa had raised over the head with the red hair. In Alicia’s glance Victoriano saw the reflection of his own death. He recognized it immediately: he had faced it many times before. Once more he fought to evade it by trying to escape. He lurched to one side, but his sick legs responded very slowly. His movement was clumsy, his attempt faltered, and the descending mallet hit him on the nape of the neck. He was stunned for a fraction of a second, then recovered his reflexes, now sharpened, and instinctively reached for one of the harpoons. Tirsa was retreating, surprised that her attempt had failed, while Alicia watched the scene in a daze, numbed, as if she herself had received the blow. She felt like running away but restrained herself. She saw how Victoriano had taken the harpoon and was aiming it between Tirsa’s eyes, and saw her flex her legs, recover her position, and wait for the attack, ready to defend herself with the mallet. If I don’t do something, the harpoon will go through her, Alicia thought, and she lunged at the man from the side, far from the harpoon’s point. An arm curled around her neck and squeezed. She felt the sudden lack of air in her lungs, but remembering to use her mouth, she opened and closed it, digging her teeth in up to their roots. She recognized the taste of blood, and focused her whole being on the strength of the bite, aware that no earthly power could force her to let go. Tirsa took advantage of that moment to raise the mallet again, letting it fall where it would, and she heard Victoriano roar. She laughed, suddenly fascinated by her own strength.

“This time I will kill you, Victoriano,” she told him without anger, almost joyfully. “So that you learn not to go around raping women.”

With self-assurance and precision, without haste, repulsion, or remorse, she dealt a final blow right in the middle of his head and heard an abrupt, muffled dry noise, like that of a machete splitting a coconut.

“Let him go now,” Tirsa told Alicia, who was still biting. “He is dead.”

Alicia had to make an effort. Her jaws were rigid, as if welded together after pressing so hard. She pulled back, prying her teeth away from the inert arm around her neck, and stood next to the other woman. The body on the ground shook with a tremor, its bones clattered, and its eyes turned. Tirsa held the harpoon, took aim, and thrust it deep into the corpse’s chest.

“Enough! Why did you do that?” Alicia screamed.

“Just in case.”

“That’s enough. Let’s go, we’ll miss the ship.”

““And what about him? Do we leave him lying here, without burying him?”

“Let the sea take him away at high tide.”

They left, running as fast as their legs would permit, passed by the southern rock, and reached the little beach where they had left the other women, but there was no one. The ship was nowhere to be seen. Farther north on the isle, there seemed to be some movement, so there they headed, arriving just when the four men were landing.

“Could you take us on your ship?” Alicia begged, half in English and half in Spanish, while extending her hand in greeting. “Pleased to meet you, I am Alicia Rovira, Captain Arnaud’s widow. Could you take us to Acapulco or to Salina Cruz, please? These are my children, and these are my friends and their children. We are five women and nine children. We have been here eight years already, and we want to go back home.”

Lieutenant Kerr, who was looking at them wide-eyed as if they were from another planet, nodded and indicated they could climb on the boat.

“Give us one hour,” Alicia pleaded in English, “
just one hour, please
, to collect our belongings.”

They dispersed, and Alicia went home and dug up her trunk. She took out her bar of Ivory soap, put her four children into a tub of rainwater, and washed their hair, their faces, their bodies. She dressed Olga in a sailor suit that had belonged to Ramoncito, and for him and her oldest daughter, she found two of her blouses, of embroidered organza, that covered down to their knees. She combed their hair, made them sit where they would not get dirty, and ordered them not to move while she got dressed.

She called Tirsa, who was chasing after the only two remaining live pigs in order to take them also, and told her that she had stored enough clothes for both of them.

“No, Alicia. Thanks, but I never dressed that way, and I think I would look strange.”

“And don’t you think you look strange with that sailcloth sack, so thick it can stand up on its own?”

“I feel more comfortable because I look more like who I am.”

Alicia took all the time she needed to bathe. She covered every inch of her body with white foam from the Ivory soap, and then poured jugs of water to rinse herself off, feeling that the very cold water was purging all of her old anxieties and dead memories, besides Victoriano’s splattered, dry blood. She dried herself carefully, allowing no moisture to remain. From a nail care box she took out an orange stick, saved from floods and hurricanes for years, and removed the cuticles from each finger. When her hands seemed acceptable, she placed the wedding band and diamond ring on her left hand. She looked at herself this way and that in the broken mirror, trying to recognize from some angle the perfect features of the woman she had been. Putting on her earrings, she got distracted for a moment by the violet gleams of the diamonds in the sunlight. She slipped into her corset with copper eyelets and shiny braids, but when she wanted to adjust it, she realized how big it was on her and how many pounds she had lost. She chose a silk blouse in a rosemary color, pleated in front, with high neck and puff sleeves, which closed with a long row of tiny buttons. She shivered as her skin felt the fresh contact of the silk, and she buttoned the blouse slowly, enjoying the touch of each button, one by one, as it passed through its buttonhole. She clasped her gray pearl necklace, making sure the brooch was in front, to show it off. Out of her trunk she chose a floor-length taffeta skirt, black and smooth, then gathered her short hair under a woven straw hat with big muslin flowers, petal pink. She pushed it to the front, to the back, to one side and then the other, until she found the exact position that suited her best.

Last, she put the wad of bills into her pocket, lifted Angel, and took her other children by the hand. Dressed in that manner, although barefoot, they all walked toward the boat. Alicia asked Lieutenant Kerr to allow the bluejackets to help her by bringing her trunk on board.

“All right,” said the lieutenant, “provided it is only one.”

Tirsa and Altagracia were already on board with the other children, a barrel full of things, and the two pigs. Rosalía and Francisca came last. They stood in front of Alicia, their eyes downcast.

“Hurry up, we’re ready to leave,” said Alicia.

“No, ma’am. We are not leaving. We are staying.”

“How come?”

“Here is where our dead are, and we cannot leave them.”

“Our dead,” said Alicia, “have been blown by the wind, swallowed by the sea, and by now they must be flying over Africa or sailing around Europe. So, come on, quick, let’s go.”

The bluejackets first carried the children and the women, then brought the trunk on their shoulders, climbed on their boat, and rowed toward the
Yorktown
. It was already four o’clock when they left Clipperton.

From the sea, Lieutenant Kerr looked at the empty atoll, barren, inhospitable, disquieting, and wondered how it was that these people had been able to survive there for so many years without dying of loneliness and boredom. He saw the ruins of miserable huts; a sad cemetery with a half-dozen fallen crosses; an unhealthy lagoon; a ragged, jagged, uninviting cliff; and some debris on the beach, among which was the hull of a sunken ship, an old mattress full of holes, some rags, and the battered body of a bald doll. Alicia was also looking at Clipperton, but it presented itself before her as full of joys and sorrows, the stage where her life had been played. She bid farewell to the invisible wooden houses with cool verandas still resonating love words that she could repeat in their entirety by heart; to the mild prehistoric monsters at the bottom of the lagoon; to the caves that hid from the heavens the sickness and suffering of the scurvy epidemic; to the magnificent chalices that the English pirates had buried after desecrating them with Jamaican rum; to the live rock that cradled the bones of loved ones as well as hated ones; to the tablecloths and bedsheets embroidered lovingly days before her wedding; to the walls guarding against the hurricane’s fury; to the wrecked ghost ship that brought the twelve Dutch sailors; to her daughters’ porcelain doll; to the lamb’s wool mattress where her children were conceived, and brought into this world. To Secundino Angel Cardona’s seductive laughter and the heroic and violent battle that her husband, Captain Ramón Arnaud, had undertaken against no one, ultimately at the cost of his life.

From the ship’s bridge, Captain Perril, who had been alarmed by the delayed return of the boat, was astonished at the spectacle of women and children from the isle climbing into the gunboat. He had to keep his curiosity in check for twenty minutes, until Lieutenant Kerr came on board, explained the visitors’ presence, told him whatever he had been able to understand of their tragic story, and relayed their petition to be taken to Salina Cruz.

Perril asked all the castaways to come aboard, welcomed them warmly, gave them boxes of chocolates as gifts, and ordered the preparation of the watchkeeper’s quarters, which had sanitary facilities. He personally supervised a menu, palatable enough but appropriate for their digestive systems, which were unaccustomed to oils and spices. About two hours later, the Clipperton survivors were taken to the dining room, where the children became the center of attention for the sailors, who joked with them and made faces. This resulted in their crying and running for cover behind their mothers. They were served chicken breasts Maryland, mashed potatoes, salad greens, milk, and apples.

After dinner, Captain Perril took Alicia to his cabin for the customary official questioning, with the help of Dr. Ross, who spoke some Spanish.

“Could I serve you something to drink, a liqueur perhaps?” he asked to break the ice. She said no thanks.

“I would like to know what day is today,” Alicia asked.

She was told it was Wednesday, 18 July 1917.

“How strange,” she commented, “we thought it was Monday, 16 July 1916. We were off by only two days, but we obliterated a whole year. I do not know how this could happen.”

“Don’t give it another thought,” Perril answered. “If according to you we are in 1916, we shall make it 1916. I like that number.”

She was asked for names, dates, events, and motivations. They found out all the hows and whys. She answered as accurately as she could, in the English she had learned under the nuns’ guidance in her adolescence, and which up to that moment she had only used to write love letters to Ramón. Perril wrote everything down, and when they finished, he asked if she would like to accompany him for some fresh air on deck, to take advantage of such a pleasant evening. Dr. Ross decided to retire, concluding that they no longer needed his services as translator in order to understand each other.

Looking at the ocean and enjoying the evening breeze, Captain Perril wished to express to Mrs. Arnaud the profound sympathy he felt for their misfortune and his admiration for the courageous way in which they had preserved the lives of adults and children. He put phrases together in his head, he had them at the tip of his tongue, but he could not articulate any of them. He was surprised to find himself insecure and bashful in the presence of this woman dressed in such an old-fashioned way and who, in spite of everything, still impressed him as beautiful.

“Don’t you have a special desire, or wish for anything in particular?” Perril managed to say. “I would like very much to be able to please you, after the many years of deprivation that you had to suffer.”

She thought about it for a moment, and told him there was something, that she would like to have some orange juice. The captain ordered a tall glass for her, and while drinking it, Alicia commented that if they had not lacked this on the isle, many lives would have been saved. From there, she told him about the scurvy episode. Then he told her about the world war, and she spoke about Victoriano; he informed her about the Russian Revolution, and she explained how they used to catch boobies. So he told her about the death of Emperor Francis Joseph I, and time went fast without their realizing it. They had engaged in a conversation that lasted until one o’clock in the morning and which they ended just because it grew too cold on deck. Before going in, the captain confessed his worries of that morning about approaching the atoll.

“Those underwater reefs,” he commented, “make navigation in that area a very delicate matter. I am happy we are already far away from that place.”

“However, I have already begun to feel nostalgia for it,” she said, smiling.