I don’t know why we cling to life in such a stubborn way. There are lives not worth living. You will disagree, I know. Our experiences are very different. Your island was Vienna. And your unknown man, your Nelson, was your husband. Your shipwreck, your marriage. You didn’t have any reason to take down sails. Or maybe you did? Everyone’s own reasons seem the most important. I am not the one to comment on your threshold of endurance.
Our island was not an inhospitable place, not at all. I would even say it received us well. Everything a man needs to survive was there. In fact, a place like that is where one realizes what a man truly needs to survive. And the only essential thing the island couldn’t give us was granted by chance: human company. I even understood why Nelson might have saved my life. He wanted a witness to his existence. Someone with whom to be someone. He probably knew that solitude can be equally or even more corrosive than that situation, and it would have sapped his strength. What would I have done? The very same thing: I would have saved the enemy to control him like a dog.
The first phase of not seeing each other had been liberating. The construction of the shelter had kept me busy. I had almost forgotten Nelson’s existence, the island, the situation in which I found myself. I mean it, beloved. There came a time when I had the feeling of being exactly where I’d decided to be. Perhaps I hadn’t even realized I couldn’t escape. I hadn’t really noticed, I mean. The awareness of this reality came afterwards, by virtue of the meeting with Souza and his clear, emphatic warnings. I wasn’t accustomed to being told what to do. The tension was palpable, you know? That man felt my rebellion, he knew he couldn’t lower his guard. And you know what men are in a pure state: savages. Don’t look at me with that serious face, Dr. Westore. I know you think we men lack the compassion gene.
We were animals at war. An underground war. Two men alone can be at war, yes, now I am certain. We simply hadn’t declared it. But I wanted what he had, and he wanted my obedience: that was enough.
I wanted power, weapons, and above all to control his territory. He’d been able to choose. He must have had some weighty reason to reserve for himself the seeming worst part, don’t you think? The narrowest part, with no access to the forest or the mountain, flooded twice a day by the tide. He could have left me there, he would have exercised absolute power over my movements, because that was a natural prison. Why would a man act so, if he wasn’t mad? This was one of the obsessive thoughts that was boring into my head. Why? Why? It’s easy to have obsessive thoughts on an island, Dr. Westore. Distractions are few and the days are identical to one another, to the point that one feels they are not passing, that time is a mirage, nothing more, and that you have stayed still, as if in a photograph, forever.
Things as they were, however, couldn’t go on forever. You know very well that inertia sooner or later will find an obstacle.
Nelson and I went on living our routine. I didn’t invade his space, from fear of death, and he didn’t let himself be seen, maybe because he thought I was going to ambush him. But, my dear Phoebe, my head never stopped spinning and although I didn’t especially want to go back to New York, I became obsessed with the idea of getting out of there.
But let’s break this down. Despite the fact that Nelson disappearing again was at first a relief, after a time that as I’ve already said, I didn’t even bother to calculate, I began to feel worried. What if he’d left the island and I hadn’t noticed? What if I’d been left alone?
When the tide was low I walked over to his area. From the border I shouted his name a number of times. I knew I was risking my life if I entered his territory without his consent. Nelson didn’t answer. Up to a point, it was natural that he didn’t hear me, but my unease grew. I decided to respect the pact and not trespass on his land. I couldn’t forget that he was armed and, whatever way you look at it, he was a criminal, a pirate, certainly without scruples.
I left my T-shirt tied to a branch near our border. It stood out. Nelson would see it and understand that it was some sort of message. He would come near. Beside the T-shirt, I wrote on the trunk, with a rock, the word “help.” I waited nearby until dusk, in case he appeared. He didn’t. And I returned to my shelter. That day I had hardly eaten anything except some seaweed. I was hungry and thirsty. When I arrived home, I prepared a little of the fish I had dried days before and I drank a brew of herbs I used as tea.
I spent my nights close to the fire to take advantage of the light, carving chess pieces out of wood I had stripped with the knife. I was working out how long it would take me to finish them and wondered if by the time they were done we would still be there. I was making them to play by myself and with Nelson, if the opportunity arose. For something to do, as well. Just as a God bored of his empty islands had had to carve Nelson and me, for something to do. That was the only time I was on the verge of believing in God. A God as sleepless as I was. Insomnia has always pursued me, as you know. Invariably, every night. Sometimes I gazed up at the stars, I observed with admiration the figures the clouds formed in the black sky or the channels the moonlight sketched on the surface of the sea. I told myself stories, tales, conversations, memories, but it got to the point at which contemplation was killing me, Phoebe, because I identified it with a manner, the most anguished manner, of waiting. And I did count sheep or grains of sand, but it didn’t work. Then the idea of chess came to me. To play. Play in that situation? Absolutely. You know my taste for games of any sort, above all those in which intellect plays a special part, and although it may seem strange, in those circumstances this interest didn’t abandon me. I had even discovered a plant from which to extract a red dye, to paint and thus distinguish one piece from another. With this same dye I had drawn faces on a rock, I’d written my name and I’d even written down, so they might accompany me, or who knows why, an Auden verse:
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
I suppose in some way, I was fantasizing about revenge. Fantasies were the only thing I could allow myself.
My signals worked. So the next day, at first light, Nelson was waiting for me at the door of my shelter. As soon as I stuck my head out I heard his voice.
“What do you want? What’s wrong? Why are you asking for help?” he asked me, almost without breathing.
“I thought maybe you had left,” I said. Why should I lie to him? I saw he was wearing binoculars around his neck. Then it was as if he was watching me. What else did he have that I didn’t know about? “Binoculars,” I said as I pointed to them.
“Yes. So?”
“I just wanted to know if you were still here. And that you hadn’t died. We could take turns visiting,” I proposed. “I don’t know, once a week, for example.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he said.
“One of us could get injured or need help.” It seemed reasonable to me to agree on a certain routine. I don’t know why I was afraid that Nelson might deceive me. “You have binoculars,” I insisted. “You can see me from a distance. I’m not in the same position.”
“Of course you’re not. So what?”
He started moving away towards his territory.
“Wait, man, wait. It’s just you and I, here. I mean we could talk a little. I’ll end up going mad, if we don’t.”
“We’ll end up going mad anyway,” he assured me. “Losing your mind is part of this experience.”
“I want to see your territory,” I said straight out. “I think I have a right, and I’m curious to see the other side of the mountain.”
“I think you haven’t understood anything at all, doctor.” Nelson was chewing something and he spat it out. “You say you have a right?”
“This situation isn’t fair.”
“I saved your life. Full stop. If I hadn’t saved you, you wouldn’t be here bothering me now.” He took off his cap and wiped the sweat with the back of his hand. “This remains as a border. You’ll continue to respect it.
It hasn’t even been four months.”
Four months? We’d been on the island that long? However long it was, it had passed almost quickly. There, as I’ve said, Dr. Westore, time was made of a different material. It really gave the sensation of being fixed, like space, and we moved around inside it as though we were walking through it.
“You mean you’d just as soon we didn’t even communicate?”
“Exactly,” he said. “When it is time for us to leave, I will tell you. But don’t worry.” He started walking along the strip of sand, which was beginning to flood. And he added, just before disappearing, “It will be years.”
At that point I collapsed, doctor. I became truly conscious of my situation.
“Years?” I was aware that I was shouting. “Years?” I repeated. “What do you mean, years?” I was petrified.
He came back. He grabbed a branch of a nearby tree, as if he might strangle it. And then he said: “Let’s see if we understand each other. Although I say you can leave tomorrow, I don’t know how you would do it. In the first place, you know as well as I do that there isn’t enough wood to build a boat nor the tools necessary to make one more or less reliable. Secondly, the only way to make the pirates believe I’m dead is to die. That is to say, to disappear for as long as possible. I saved your life, don’t make me regret it. Technically, you’re dead. Got it?”
“Listen, Nelson, we could try building something with the trunk of a fallen tree: there are lots of them and some merchant ship could pick us up miles from here if we head east.”
Nelson shook his head from side to side.
“You don’t understand. These people aren’t like us. If they hear that a couple of shipwrecks have been rescued and they will hear, believe me, they’ll find me.”
“Do they have some motive for wanting to annihilate you?”
“The simple fact of having escaped. I know their contacts, their routes, the names of the big fish.”
To be honest with you, dear Phoebe, I had the feeling Nelson was exaggerating, like I was watching a film. I was about to ask him another question when he said: “I was preparing for some time to escape from the Solimán. I came to it involuntarily. I’m from Lisbon. I’ve always liked traveling. Five years ago I went to Saint Helena to see where Napoleon was buried. It had always seemed strange that an island would become a prison . . . it doesn’t surprise me anymore.
It was clear by this stage that this man and I had things in common. He sat on the ground and went on, while I sat opposite him.
“There I met Cecilia, a beautiful waitress who worked at a bar in the port. I fell in love with her as I never had before and I decided to stay. You know how the threads of life are, you understand them only when they’re already wrapped around you.
I thought it was a good sign that Nelson was capable of doing something for love. I don’t know why, people capable of falling in love awaken my trust. It’s the opposite of what happens to me with people who can’t get drunk.
Nelson was ready to tell me his past right up to the end. It’s something common in sailors, it’s hard for them to talk, but the day they do, it’s as if they have made a decision and they act accordingly.
“Cecilia had a brother. In Saint Helena there are few young men. As soon as they become adults, they escape from a place with no future and less work every day. They needed seamen on the Solimán. Through Cecilia’s brother, who was a member of the crew and recommended me, they offered me a job. I needed it. I’ve always made my living from jobs that have come to me. I’ve been a sailor, a longshoreman, a dog walker, a mechanic . . . but, of course, nobody told me what kind of boat it was. Neither did Cecilia. I don’t know if she knew; we never discussed the subject. When I understood, it was already too late, I was in up to my neck.”
How often this happens in life, right, Dr. Westore? When you understand, it’s already too late. There’s no turning back.
“First, I let myself be dazzled by the easy money, I admit that, but soon I realized I was going towards disaster. Five years of renouncing my life, my way of understanding it, my dreams, everything. Five years being a beast at the orders of other beasts.”
“Why did you put up with it for so long?” I wanted to know.
How many people live in a skin they don’t feel to be their own, right, doctor? It’s a great mystery, how we don’t dare act according to our desires or convictions and prefer those of others.
“It didn’t take long for me to be thinking of a way to escape, but they are mafia, I assure you. I was waiting a long time for the moment to do it. Death seemed the only way to escape. Your shot was my salvation. I’d been ready for so long! And suddenly an impulse, a flash, the moment, I don’t know. I almost didn’t think. Your shot and the water. I knew of the existence of the island. The old cook on the Solimán, Gerardo, the only friend I had among them, certainly because he was also from Lisbon and we could speak in our language without anyone understanding, had spoken to me of this place. I didn’t think. I preferred to die rather than continue that life.”
Was I supposed to believe him, Phoebe? Did it matter, the truth?
“And Cecilia?” I asked.
“What about Cecilia? Cecilia nothing. She too has to think I’m dead. If one day we get out of here, of course I won’t go back to look for her. First and foremost, Cecilia is her brother’s sister. Haven’t you heard of the bonds instilled by blood?”
My father came into my head. I nodded. I felt overwhelmed. Years! Years on this island? Goaded perhaps by distress, perhaps by Souza’s confession, I told him part of my history. Baltimore, New York, Mary, my mother’s death, the expectation of my father’s death in Texas. My always insatiable desire to sail, the sabbatical year, the preparations for the journey on which I’d lost everything, including my only friends. Souza listened to me, interested, without interrupting, while he drew and wiped away lines in the sand with a stick.
He saw me lose heart, I suppose. And maybe because of that, or who knows why, he gave in.
“Alright, I’ll wait for you every Tuesday, in the afternoon. I’ll come to read beside this tree.”
Understanding that he expected to spend years on that island had disturbed me, but him saying that he would wait for me while reading finished me. Reading? Reading what? He had books? What else did he have?
“Reading?” I asked. “Reading what?”
“I have a couple of books,” he said. “I like to read.”
“Lots of us sailors like to read,” I said. “And write,” I added. “Do you have pencil and paper as well?”
He didn’t answer, as if I’d violated his privacy.
“Would you be able to lend me one of your books? A little paper?”
“I’ll wait at the border, every Tuesday. In the afternoon.”
After uttering these words as he might have thrown a stone, he began to move away.
It was clear to me, at that precise instant, that I would invade his territory, dear Phoebe. I would become an invader. And, if I could, I’d rob his loot, whatever it was. And that would amount to a declaration of war, because there’d be no doubt about who had taken it.
Suddenly, I wanted all his belongings. The binoculars, for example. He could see if any ships passed, although they might be distant. He could monitor the frequency of their passing, their flags, the chances of getting their attention. And I wanted the books. He must have things I couldn’t even suspect. If the Solimán’s cook had landed on the island, perhaps he’d left some useful objects.
From that day on, my only thought was to find a way to evade his surveillance. I didn’t want to confront him. I wanted to see his shelter when he wasn’t there or when he was sleeping. I had to come up with a strategy. Surprise him. Outwit him.
However, we should never underestimate an enemy. Confrontation is like a game of chess: while you are scheming, your opponent is too. The point is seeing which of the rivals is able to think of the biggest number of moves and guess the other’s plans.
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br /> Tuesday after Tuesday we kept our appointment, checked that we were still alive, both still on the island, and separated again, almost without saying anything. And Tuesday after Tuesday, on seeing him, I would think that I had to come up with some plan. I figured that the best time to attack his territory was on a Tuesday. Swimming in the other direction, far from the place where he waited for me. As a general rule, he arrived first. And there I would see him, sitting near his apron of sand, on a small mound. Binoculars hanging around his neck and, in effect, a book which he left on a rock before approaching me when he saw me appear. There was a lot at stake. I could only attack him once, that was clear. From that moment, it would be war. He would search for me to kill me. Was it worth it, for a book? For the curiosity of seeing what things he had and was hiding from me? Perhaps I could even steal a weapon—at this stage I’d already seen he had more than one. It was unlikely.
On the fifth or sixth Tuesday, I figure towards the end of November, I told him I would trade my watch for his book. Not the knife, I needed my knife and he already had one. No way: he wouldn’t agree to any kind of barter.
“What are you reading?”
“A book in Portuguese.”
I’d believed he was from Lisbon only because he’d told me so, but in fact he didn’t have a foreign accent at all. An armed man is very convincing; or maybe there was just no point in questioning what he said. When all is said and done, Phoebe, the only lies that matter are those that have the power of transforming life, don’t you think?
The Island of Last Truth Page 5