“What book?”
“Are you familiar with Portuguese literature?” His tone was arrogant. Superior.
“Not particularly.”
“Then me talking to you about the author of the book is pointless.”
“And the other book, is that Portuguese as well?”
“No.”
“English, then?”
“Yes, English. Conrad.”
“Which? I’ve read them all.”
“Well then one of the ones you’ve read. I don’t know the title. The cover is missing.”
“Tell me what it’s about. I’ll know which one it is.”
He began to speak and I recognized the plot of The Secret Agent, one of my favorites. The story of two men helping one another. Remember, doctor? We read it together a while ago.
“And you can’t lend it to me?”
“I can lend it to you for a week, if you catch me twelve good fishes.”
“Twelve? That’s madness. You know how hard it is to catch them.”
“Do you want the book?”
Of course I wanted it, Phoebe. I’d never wanted a book as much as I did then. I would be able to do something that animals couldn’t do, I’d feel like a man and not a beast. I remembered the typical question, what book would you take to a desert island? Now my answer would be–any book at all. Whichever, Dr. Westore. Even the book in Portuguese, written in a language I don’t understand in the least, would have kept me company.
“All right. In two weeks I’ll bring the fish. Next week don’t expect me.”
Why did he want to get out of working? For what did Nelson Souza want time? Fishing was perhaps one of the most entertaining activities, one of the things that made you feel better, at least it did me.
He seemed upset. Perhaps these encounters had become a comfortable way for him to check up on me.
“A dozen will be worth a week’s loan,” he said before leaving. “It’s the rainy season,” he warned. “Try to find a better place than the one you have.”
I was grateful for the information. Days before I’d found an almost invisible inlet between some rocks. A type of cave I’d only approached by night, when Nelson couldn’t see me. I’d sought it when faced with the threat of heavy rain, yes, but also in case one day I needed to hide from him. Some nights I slept there. But I emerged before the first rays of sunlight, in case he was watching me.
I brought him the dozen fish he’d requested. Nelson had a net to collect them. A net he couldn’t have sewn with the materials on the island. A net, therefore, that was already there, one of his belongings I didn’t know about. A great tool. I pretended not to notice it. Of course, he also had the book for me. It wasn’t only the cover that was missing. Some pages at the beginning were missing. The already short novel was now scarcely a few pages. When he handed it to me, I immediately put it under my T-shirt, as if it were the greatest of treasures.
“I want it here next Tuesday.”
“We’ll be here.” I spoke in the plural about the book and myself. A telling plural, I thought. If there’d been a mammal on the island, I surely would have made it into a pet. I needed to talk and not only talk. There were days when I felt I was on the verge of going mad, when I doubted my existence, or more than doubted, I became aware of its insignificance. Living for the sake of living, living so as not to die. Nobody, except Nelson, knew I was alive; it was like not living. In some moments I wished I were dead. Not to die, no. To be dead, yes, to have done it. And on the contrary, I was incapable of killing another or killing myself. Hippocratic oath? I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan.
But the following Tuesday we didn’t go back. Or the next. I went four weeks without showing up at the appointment, hidden every Tuesday in my secret, or what I considered secret, cave. I imagined Nelson waiting for me. I imagined him becoming furious, evaluating the possibility of coming in search of what belonged to him, hating me, shouting at me, watching with his binoculars in vain. I also thought, other days, that he would appear at any moment and without any ado he would kill me. I had trouble sleeping and I lived in a constant state of alert. My defiance was puerile, I know, but in those circumstances, my darling, in those circumstances the brain doesn’t function normally. One’s values, priorities, and emotions get disrupted. One clutches at straws. For me the book became a bridge, a kind of visa, a symbol of return. It was my victory.
In fact, my attitude was not the same as before. I went back to marking time, trying to stay clean, hiding to do my bodily needs and burying them, reclaiming part of the civilization from whence I came. With an inexact calculation, I even had a kind of solitary New Year’s Eve celebration. I was feeling strong and optimistic.
On the fifth Tuesday I went alone, without Conrad. I’d decided to tell him a lie. I’d decided to tell him I’d lost it. However far-fetched my argument seemed, it was my word against his. Against his word and his weapons, yes, but was he going to kill me over a book? I weighed up the risk. It was impossible to kill a man over a book.
But it wasn’t about a book. It was about the order of things. Discipline. Power. You know the value of symbols, my darling.
3.
When Dr. Prendel returns to the border after having missed four Tuesdays, Souza isn’t there. Nor any trace of him. The silence seems terrifying. He realizes that he has assessed his situation badly. He regrets not having come to the previous appointments. He regrets being there without the book. He fears for his life.
He calls Souza. Until dusk. Even after night has fallen. Nothing. Nothing at all. He will have to wait until the following Tuesday.
Three weeks go by. Souza has given no signs of life, he hasn’t appeared on any Tuesday. Or any day, in fact. Mathew knows this because, obsessed by the possible repercussions, he has gone every afternoon. He has spent hours with the book in his hands, waiting for Souza’s appearance. He has left the T-shirt on the branch again. He has even left the book wrapped in the T-shirt. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Dr. Prendel asks himself if Souza is still alive. He thinks he has to respect his absence. A bitter struggle is unfolding between his desire, curiosity, and common feeling. What if he is injured? What if he has died? Worse: what if he has left? The same uncertainty must have tortured Souza during his disappearance. And despite having a compelling reason, recovering his book, Nelson Souza has not come looking for him. He has proudly shown that he doesn’t depend on Mathew at all, shown him his indifference. It is as though he had said: you are the one who asked for the appointments; I don’t need to see you; sooner or later you’ll come, you’ll give me back the book and ask my forgiveness. Nelson is punishing him.
The days are all the same. One after another like links in an absurd, rusty chain that leads nowhere. An endless chain.
Prendel can’t stand the pressure any longer. He doesn’t have a grand plan, but neither does he have the patience necessary to find one. Prendel is a man of action and he doesn’t know that life goes on even when it isn’t pushed.
He decides to break the pact. He will go over to the other side. He’ll do it at night, definitely. He waits for a full moon.
And when the night he is waiting for comes, he doesn’t hesitate. He is carrying one of the syringes of anesthetic from the first-aid kit and keeps four more vials in his pocket. There is enough to defend himself, to put him to sleep and, if necessary, to kill him.
He leaves his shelter and walks with confidence and precision. When he gets to the vicinity of the forbidden zone, he will crawl. He will try not to make noise.
He lies down on the sand, which is damp. He smells it and remembers his arrival on the island, which seems distant now. It is not long since the tide went out. He advances skirting the mountain, hardly able to see anything. The brightness of the moon isn’t enough. He scans the darkness, eyes wide open. His breathing seems loud. His heart is beating with an unknown rapidity. Calm down, Mathew, calm down, he tells himself silently. Nels
on must be sleeping, he says, he surely isn’t lying in wait now, he repeats. He takes a deep breath. He presses his eyelids with his thumb and index finger. He wants to calm himself. For a moment, he considers the possibility of turning back. He moves forward when he feels his heart beating at a more normal rate. As soon as he begins to move, however, it races once again. He keeps going.
It doesn’t take him long to cover the distance separating him from the other side. He feels nerves throughout his body. He calls it nerves, but he could just as well call it fear. He advances, crouching. He takes only three steps. On the third, a shot causes him to stiffen. First he thinks it has passed very close to him. He has heard its whistle. But immediately he discovers that it has lodged in his thigh, almost in the groin. It’s bleeding. It burns his flesh. He plugs the injury with a hand. The bullet is inside, the muscle tissue destroyed. He thanks his lucky stars that it hasn’t hit his femoral artery. He falls to the ground. He doesn’t dare move, forwards or backwards. He hears noises. Souza is approaching. He is carrying a lantern. It shines in his eyes and blinds him.
“I was expecting you. It’s taken you a while.” He tuts. “Did you think I wouldn’t be alert with the tide out?”
“I’m wounded.” Prendel is dizzy.
“I should have killed you.”
“We’re even.”
“Don’t try it again, doctor, don’t do it. Next time the bullet will go straight to your head.”
Prendel looks up and struggles to make out the figure of Souza. He searches underneath his T-shirt. He gives him the book. He stains it with blood. Souza grabs it abruptly. Protected by the darkness, Prendel takes advantage of the moment to get rid of the syringe and vials. The risk of keeping them and Souza discovering them was too great. The other man helps him to get up and ties his hands behind his back.
“I don’t think there’s any need . . . ” Prendel tries to complain, but Souza pretends not to hear him. The doctor lets him do it, he doesn’t dare fight against an armed man, and so much the less, wounded as he is. Souza carries Prendel. They move through the darkness. Nelson pants. Both are well-built; he finds it difficult to drag Prendel, who can barely walk.
When they get to Souza’s shelter, Mathew is speechless. They are in a wide area deep inside the mountain. There is a fire lit which generously illuminates the whole space. Mathew glances around rapidly. Nelson Souza lives a life very different to him. Nelson has canned foods, glasses and cutlery, whisky and cigarettes, saucepans to heat food, and worst and most serious of all, he has a lifeboat. Now he understands where he got the medical kit, the fishing tackle, and now he realizes that he must have a full kit of flares and signals to make their presence on this damned island known. Mathew understands why Nelson has wanted to veto Mathew’s access to his territory from the beginning. He didn’t want him to see the boat, be able to get to it. Nelson has his safe passage prepared and didn’t want Prendel to know. He’d certainly figured that the doctor wouldn’t tolerate spending an indefinite amount of time on the island if he discovered the existence of a means of leaving.
Souza also ties up his legs. Mathew has become a prisoner of war. All the while they have not exchanged a single word. Finally, Prendel passes out.
When he wakes again it is day. He is still tied up. He is lying on a bed of leaves. Beside him he sees the medical kit he had been keeping in his hut. Nelson is nearby, he calls him.
“You’ve been unconscious,” Souza explains. “I took the opportunity to go looking for the medical kit in your cabin,” he says sarcastically. “I’ve injected you with morphine, I’ve removed the bullet and I’ve stitched up the injury as well as I could. Gerardo taught me one day, with some dead rabbits. We sewed up a few. I’ve done it in the same way.”
“You having experience is a comfort,” says Prendel ironically, confirming at the same time that Nelson knows the rudiments of basic medicine and is a self-sufficient man.
“By the way, I saw that there were four vials of anesthetic missing and by chance I found them along the way, near where I shot you.”
Prendel knows it’s an accusation. He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t protest.
Souza tells him he will spend a few days there, with him, until he is well enough to leave again.
“Why haven’t you left me to die?” Prendel wants to know. “Now I owe you two lives.”
Souza smiles.
“I’m not a killer,” says Souza. “There are places it’s impossible to come back from,” he assures him. “I’ve seen truly disturbed people, after committing a crime, doctor. People lose their minds. I don’t recommend it.”
“Man, I save . . . used to save lives.”
“Used to save, of course. Here you almost put an end to one, mine.”
“In self-defense.”
Souza shrugs. The doctor continues: “The truth is that it had already been a while since I practiced medicine before going traveling. I used to teach at the university but I didn’t feel comfortable there either.”
And Prendel explains some of the reasons he decided to make the journey in the Queen to Nelson Souza. And what he felt when he found himself alone in the middle of the Atlantic, watching how his friends stayed behind, how his boat was moving away. His salvation and his past, all together, all at once. Life.
“You didn’t have a bad life in New York. I’ve always wanted to go,” declares Souza. “I think I’d have liked to have been born there, on the other side of the Atlantic.’
“You won’t find anything you don’t have anywhere else,” Prendel comments and with a gesture asks for a cigarette, which Souza passes him already lit.
“Well people always dream of what they haven’t got. Maybe you would like to have been born in Europe or what do I know, Argentina.” Nelson lights a cigarette for himself as well. He inhales the smoke, holds it inside for a moment and then expels it with force, gasping, as if he might also expel wishes that have never become reality.
Dr. Prendel shakes his head.
“What matters is what you do with your life, not where you do it.”
Nelson doesn’t answer. He seems pensive. Prendel feels tired. He puts out his cigarette, lies down, and falls asleep.
Those days while the doctor is recovering from his injury, he and Souza have long conversations. About family, the past, the future. At first begrudgingly; then with the spirit necessity bestows. It can’t be said that they establish a bond of friendship because Prendel’s hands and legs are still tied, and Souza is still armed, in a state of alert. It is certain, however, that they arrive at a closeness lent by the conviction that if they emerge from the exceptional situation uniting them, they will probably never see each other again.
After ten days, the doctor begins to move his leg. He has made no attempt to escape, it is obvious that he has nowhere to go. What’s more, he is still tied up. Souza fears an attack and only unties him under surveillance, so he can take care of his bodily needs or eat.
“I think I’m well enough to go,” Prendel comments one morning when Souza returns from fishing.
“Of course you can assess your condition much better than I can, doctor.”
Prendel asks Souza to help him stand up, takes a few steps.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “Or the day after.”
“No hurry,” Souza reassures him.
“Thank you for almost killing me,” says Prendel as he sits down again. “And for not doing it,” he adds with a bitter smile. “Although look, truth is, maybe you’d have done me a favor. Nothing is waiting for me, on land. I’ll live embittered by all that’s happened, blaming myself for having led my friends to their deaths, raging about my failure, useless, unable to give classes or operate, maybe living with my father, retired in Georgetown hoping death comes for me before it does for him. As long as I’m here, I feel I’m expiating my guilt. The suffering is useful to me. You, on the other hand, want to live, return to the world, to find once again what you left behind. Do you have family?”
“When I left Lisbon my parents were alive, yes, and I have a brother and sister, Miguel and Lidia. Lidia is two years younger than me, a math teacher in the school where we studied together. Miguel is a motorbike mechanic. He’s married and has two children. My parents have a grocery store in the Alfama neighborhood.”
Prendel thinks that Nelson is surely inventing everything he tells him, but it doesn’t occur to him to reproach him because in the middle of that night of misfortune, he feels in the mood for the most common story in the world, the ABCs of a family and their work and bonds. He wants to hear about these things.
He himself has told a number of lies and some truths, as if he were chatting from his apartment in Manhattan, and he assumes Souza has done the same. He understands that it is not the stories that matter, but the act of telling them to each other. At these moments, they don’t need someone familiar, in the profound sense of the word, but a companion, someone at their side who talks, says anything, humanizes them. The next day, Prendel is sure that he is well enough to leave. Eleven days have gone by. Souza has made sure that he’s had everything he needed. The island of contradictions, Prendel baptizes it. He’s been searching for a name for it for days. He mentions it to Souza, who says:
“Does it seem important to you doctor, what this forsaken piece of land is called?” He raises his index finger to his temple and rotates it to signal that Prendel has got a few scews loose.
“Putting a name on things seems a good way of making them exist,” adds Prendel, not too convinced. And he thinks that maybe, without realizing it, they both are going through transitory moments of madness. That asphyxiating heat, that situation, are not for nothing. And in this state, they are capable of anything. At times he thinks that if only they could manage to escape from there, if they could reach civilization together, they could be friends. His hatred is becoming tolerance. What would he have done in Souza’s place? To consider the question is to begin to get outside of himself and become able to see the world, for an instant at least, through other eyes. What would he have done? And he realizes he isn’t capable of giving himself a single answer.
The Island of Last Truth Page 6