Isle of Passion

by Laura Restrepo

  Santiago Tlatelolco Prison, Mexico City, 1902

  Given name: Ramón Nonato

  Family names: Arnaud Vignon

  Date of birth: August 31, 1879

  Place: Orizaba

  Father: Angel Miguel Arnaud (French citizen)

  Mother: Carlota Vignon (French citizen)

  Height: 5' 7"

  Color of hair: brown

  Complexion: white

  Forehead: ample

  Mouth: regular, thin lips

  Nose: chiseled

  Distinctive markings: small scar in the middle of his forehead

  THAT WAS RAMÓN ARNAUD’S personal description, July 8, 1901, as recorded in the enlistment papers of his troubled military career, when he was twenty-two years old. He started as a first sergeant in the Seventh Regiment cavalry of the Mexican Army. It is recorded in the archives of the National Defense Ministry.

  His dossier even includes anthropometric notations, which indicate he was a man of medium height (67 inches), of small, almost feminine feet (left foot, 9.75 inches), normal-sized head, and small hands (his left hand, up to the tip of his middle finger, was 4.75 inches long).

  Exactly a year after this dossier was recorded, on July 8, 1902, his rosy white skin had become mousy gray, his brown hair was jumping with lice, and the small scar on the waxen texture of his ample forehead stood out like a cross carved by fingernails. Lying on a cot in his cell in the Santiago Tlatelolco military prison, he left his ration of refried beans untouched on its pewter plate, and cried out of rage and humiliation.

  A court-martial had dictated his sentence. Five and a half months of imprisonment for being an army deserter, and he had been stripped of rank, degraded to enlisted man. On the night of May 20 just seven weeks before, he had been waiting in a cold sweat for the right time to escape from the barracks, crouching behind some sacks of maize and anticipating with horror the moment that the news would reach his hometown, Orizaba: “Ramón Arnaud is an army deserter.”

  But he, poor devil, was incapable of enduring what his comrades in arms in the Seventh Regiment could easily bear. Those hungry, barefoot Indians were able to overcome the inhuman discipline, the kick in the ass, the filth, and the dire poverty that being an army trooper meant. But not he. And neither could he tolerate his comrades: he considered them backward, smelly, half naked in the rags they wore as uniforms, adrift in alcohol and marijuana.

  While he, an Arnaud Vignon, a well-educated white man whose family influence had expeditiously advanced him to first sergeant, was more of a shit than all of that shit. And this would be the prized gossip in Orizaba—whispers at the church portico, on the alameda boulevards, during the afternoon hot chocolate.

  The town of Orizaba had a French gazebo in the center of the plaza, an Art Nouveau train station, a municipal palace with a wrought-iron facade designed by Eiffel himself—the man made famous by his tower—which had been brought disassembled, screw by screw, from France. The Orizaba families had a Gallic air and were industrious and prosperous. They had more faith in the progress achieved through violent force by their president, Don Porfirio Díaz, than in the heretical, nationalistic ideals of the Indian Benito Juárez. There were such families as the Legrands, who manufactured percale, piqués, calicos, blankets, and French linen in their Cocolapan Woven Goods Factory. And the Suberbies, whose fortune rose like the foam of their Moctezuma beer; Monsieur Chabrand, who sold fine silks and haberdashery in his store, which he had named The Factories of France. The society ladies wore silk shantung dresses embroidered with soutache to stroll down the alameda, and then had to lift their skirts and underskirts a bit to avoid soiling them in human excrement when crossing any of the other streets, used as public latrines by Orizaba’s poor.

  A few years earlier, Napoleon’s invading troops had almost turned the city into their permanent headquarters, and the local gentlemen devoted themselves to the pastime of identifying their more exotic army uniforms. They could recognize the Vincennes hunters for their dark blue woolen jackets; the Zouaves, with their red britches, so wide they resembled skirts, and their yellow leather walking boots; the Algerian Zouaves, with their dark skin and white turbans; the Spanish soldiers under General Prim, for their light uniforms and straw hats, and their officers, who wore jaunty little caps they called “leopoldines.”

  Orizaba the Damned was condemned by the rest of the nation for its recent docility in the face of European domination and its fascination with the extravagant and phantasmagorical reign of Archduke Maximilian, who served as Emperor of Mexico for three years and seven days, until the Indian Juárez had him killed in the Cerro de las Campanas to prove that no blond-bearded Austrian would rule over the free men of his Aztec homeland. And to make sure this was completely understood, after he was shot, his body was returned to Europe in a rosewood coffin, properly embalmed, and having, instead of his own, the glass eyes from an image of Saint Ursula.

  Ramón’s French father, Angel Miguel Arnaud, had crossed the ocean and settled in Orizaba. He loved his new land more than his old one, toiled tirelessly, and managed to accumulate a sizable fortune. He took advantage of a transportation subsidy given to him by the Porfirio Díaz administration to build the local railroad. He became the owner of a hacienda and of a home on Calle Real. He was named Orizaba postmaster, and that was how he had turned into one of the thousands of bureaucrats supported by Don Porfirio in fulfillment of his political slogan, “Let’s feed the donkey.”

  In spite of that slogan, life was not easy for these bureaucrats. Their salaries were usually not paid for months, and they were kept in a state of alert for fear of losing their posts at the slightest suspicion of disloyalty to the government. For self-preservation, they had to belong to the appropriate political club, contribute large sums for official holiday celebrations, buy presents for their superior’s mistress, and march in all the parades.

  Angel Miguel Arnaud understood these rules and knew how to play the game. During his lifetime, his family enjoyed a comfortable life, up to the provincial splendor customary in Orizaba. As soon as he died, his widow, Doña Carlota Vignon—who was until then a happy and carefree matron, famous for preparing the best homemade mayonnaise in town—squandered all of his fortune according to some, or fell victim to a greedy executor according to others, but with the same result: total ruin.

  Ramón, their oldest child—by then a half-French, half-Mexican teenager with large, dreamy eyes and long, doll-like eyelashes—was so perplexed by this adversity that he had no idea of what to do with his life. He had been raised to count on an inheritance, not to deal with bankruptcy.

  For a while he was an apothecary’s apprentice. He memorized the formulas and names of all available medications, and he began providing first aid until the apothecary abandoned town, business, and all, and moved to the capital. After a chaotic period of doing nothing, Ramón opted for a military career.

  If he could have afforded it, he would have paid for an officer’s career with training at a military academy, as any son of a white man was wont to do, and would have received medals, honors, and all sorts of creature comforts for himself. But since he had no money, he had to become, like average Mexicans, just beaten-up army fodder. He did obtain one privilege in recognition of his social status, and that was to join with the rank of first sergeant.

  At the first bitter taste of life in the barracks, young Ramón Arnaud regretted his decision and tried to change the course of his life a little too late, making his biggest error, the one that marked him, for better or for worse, till the end of his days.

  It happened one night in the barracks, behind the sacks of maize. He started thinking about his life and that it was better to suffer humiliation than to be repelled by it all and be bored to death. He ran away.

  After deserting, he went into hiding in Mexico City like an outlaw, ashamed like a sinner. He spent a month wandering in the sordid streets of Tepito, hiding in the warehouses of La Merced market, trying to avoid being doused by
the locals emptying their chamber pots out the window. He took refuge in the whores’ hovels in Calle del Organo, lived in the taverns together with suicidal bohemians and blind musicians, and vied for coins on street corners, like the fire-eaters, the poetry hawkers, and the cat hunters.

  Then came his dark day, when he was found and jailed as an army deserter. On those humid and unbearable nights in Santiago Tlatelolco, while his crumbled honor tormented him even more than the cold in his cell or the lice on his head, he realized that he had made a terrible mistake, that it was better to be dead a hundred times than to suffer that humiliation just once.

  In his feverish insomnia he thought of the worst possible forms of death: being consumed by fire, his body dismembered and roasted over a grill; trapped in miasmas, slowly sinking into a viscous and foul-smelling swamp; or being dumped into the ocean and menaced by the shadowy blue glimmers of a great black manta ray until finally drowning.

  “Any of them,” he said in his delirium, “I’ll take any of those torments, anything but this dishonor.”

  The day he was set free, already recovered from his fevers and again in possession of his mental faculties, he made a sacred pact with himself. Once out of jail and looking back at the blackened pre-Columbian stone walls of Santiago Tlatelolco, he solemnly swore, on the memory of his father and on his mother’s love, on the seven daggers that pierce the heart of Our Lady of Sorrows and on the love of his country, that never ever again, in his personal life or as an army man, would he go through the shame of another humiliation like this one.

  Mexico City, 1907

  COLONEL ABELARDO AVALOS of the engineering division, godfather and protector of the young junior officer Ramón Arnaud, made an appointment to speak with his godson in Mexico City.

  “Ramón, you are going to Clipperton. With a detail of eleven soldiers under your command.”

  He was told just like that, no preambles.

  When Arnaud heard the word “Clipperton,” he felt a stab of pain behind his eyes. He knew all about that miserable atoll lost in the middle of the ocean because he had accompanied Colonel Avalos there a couple of times. While his guts froze, his face was burning; he wiped the sweat off with his hands, and onto his pants.

  “Banished,” he murmured almost imperceptibly, aware that with a desertion on his record he had no moral authority to protest.

  Slouched in his chair, belittled, already twenty-seven years old, big and hirsute, but only a second lieutenant. His protest came almost in a whisper: going to that island would be like starting all over again, and for the third time. This was too much, it asked too much of him. How come nobody recognized that he did not deserve such an ill fate? Why was he being subjected to this third ordeal by fire when he was passing his second one with honors?

  After serving his sentence at Santiago Tlatelolco, Arnaud, with a mule’s obstinacy, had intended to go back, to retrace his path in order to show courage instead of fear, and to be decisive where before he had faltered. He would respect the solemn oath he had made to himself facing the blackened walls of the military prison, even at the cost of his life.

  On December 16, 1902, he had rejoined the army, this time just as a recruit, in the Twenty-third Battalion in Veracruz. The conditions were tougher there than those that had broken him after his original enlistment as first sergeant, but in spite of this, he endured the second hitch. He endured it all with resignation and ate crow with a large spoon. In six months, he made corporal and, later, sergeant second class. Then he was again a first sergeant, just as before.

  In July 1904, already a second lieutenant, he was transferred to the Tenth Battalion in Yucatán, with orders to quash an insurrection of the Maya Indians. It was an impossible objective. His mission was to do away with a cross that talked, someone known as Saint Talking Cross, who acted as the supreme commander of the Indians and incited them to rebellion. Arnaud tried to fulfill his duty. He demolished temple fortresses, and with his sword toppled many of those Talking Cross leaders, who were using their gift of speech not to call the Mayas to prayer but to encourage them to struggle. For each cross he struck down, another three new talking crosses sprang in place, and his mission turned into an inferno, an endless nightmare.

  As a reward for his efforts, ineffectual though superhuman, he was given the medal of merit and courage, and his lost honor was restored.

  If he had put his past behind him and was now in good standing with the army, distinguishing himself as a junior officer and even earning a medal, why then was he being forced to start all over again? Why was he being isolated in the remotest, most insignificant corner on the map?

  “Besides, Godfather, I am getting married,” Arnaud desperately pleaded to Colonel Avalos.

  His wedding had already been arranged; he could not break his word and didn’t want to. He had already asked for Alicia’s hand in marriage, he was in love, and she was waiting for him. How could he explain to his fiancée that he was calling off their wedding? How to justify another failure to the people in his hometown of Orizaba? Everybody knew about his impending marriage. “Please understand,” pleaded Arnaud, “please realize that this wedding cannot be postponed.”

  This merely served to free the torrent of Colonel Avalos’s patriotic fervor. His words were gushing out in spurts. Ramón Arnaud could perceive only fragments, unconnected phrases that reached his ears slowly, as if deferred, moments after being uttered.

  “There are issues that must take precedence,” the colonel went on irrepressibly. “Now is the time for daring action . . . think of your country, your homeland . . . of defending this piece of Mexican soil from the French, who want to take possession . . . of taking up arms against historical injustice. . . . You speak French, and have the right qualifications . . . of giving up your life if necessary . . . Mexicans do answer the call to arms. . . .”

  Arnaud was not concentrating on Avalos’s words. These bastards, he thought. They really want to torture me. But anyway, he held on to his dejected mien and his pleading look, in the faint hope of softening Avalos with his victimized expression. The result was, though, that the persuasive, deliberate voice of the colonel began to ring with impatience, suddenly acquiring a metallic vibration, and, coming down like an ax, it struck this threat:

  “If you refuse, the Mexican Army will consider it a second desertion.”

  “But, Godfather, if I accept, it will be close to a dishonorable discharge.”

  The obvious blackmail had sent a shot of adrenaline through Arnaud’s brain, and, to his own amazement, his voice sounded virile and convincing, giving him strength to continue. “I’m not going to play the fool anymore; this one I am going to fight,” he told himself, and he was already going to let his anger out in a barrage of words when Avalos stopped him cold.

  “Easy, young man,” he said. “If you stop taking it the hard way, I’ll tell you what’s good about it.”

  And then he began dribbling the encouraging news: that same day he would be promoted to lieutenant, and President Porfirio Díaz in person would name him governor of the island.

  “If you want to get married, my dear Ramón, you can go to Clipperton with your wife, and we’ll give you a good furlough to take care of the whole thing. I have met Alicia, and I know she will like that. I will put at your disposal whatever it is you need, so you’ll have everything. What’s more,” added Avalos, “within a week, you and I will depart for Japan on a special mission that has to do with your appointment in Clipperton. I will explain later, very delicate matters of state, you know.”

  Clipperton, Japan, lieutenant, governor . . . Ramón did not quite understand. Then Avalos lunged upon him.

  “You’ve got it made, my son. Congratulations,” he heard him say, while getting a big bear hug, with big paws patting him on the back.

  That was how Ramón received notice that the following day the president was to send for him and assign him to a delicate mission because he considered him the right man, recognized his merits, pardone
d his misdemeanors, and was going to name him governor of Clipperton Island and raise his pay. Arnaud was still stunned by it all. What at first had sounded like a terrible disgrace and a punishment had suddenly turned into that golden and unique opportunity to change the course of his life.

  When his appointment with Don Porfirio came to an end, he took his leave with a lot of genuflections, and left the splendidly luxurious billiards room of the Chapultepec Castle, completely sure he was, at last, going to be a happy man.

  The blood throbbing in his temples drowned the sound of his own footsteps—too quick to be martial—and he had the sensation that his black shoes, meticulously polished very early that morning, scarcely touched the parquet, an ostentatious display of precious woods. For a moment he feared that the weight of the president’s gaze on his back would make him lose control of his legs, and he anguished over the possibility of tripping and falling, but when at last he went through the door and heard it close behind him, he was finally able to breathe deeply and recover his composure. He looked up at the cherubs painted on the ceiling and felt that the smiles of their little rosy lips were for him.

  After leaving the Chapultepec Castle, which was the presidential summer residence, Arnaud started walking aimlessly along the brand-new Paseo de la Reforma in total disbelief of the preceding events, and without seeing anything else but the two new resplendent metal bars on his army jacket that now accredited him as a lieutenant. He kept thinking that none of the pedestrians who crossed his way could help but admire them, and did not even notice that the unforgiving noonday sun was overheating him too much inside his dark woolen dress uniform.

  He tried to reconstruct, word by word, his dialog with Porfirio Díaz, and mentally repeated each phrase about ten or twelve times. Though he did not say anything special to him, Arnaud made an effort to remember every word. Nor did the president receive him in his office, as anticipated, but instead, Arnaud was forced to walk around accompanying the president on an inspection tour of the esthetic reconstruction already under way at the castle.