Isle of Passion

by Laura Restrepo

  While the soldiers were delayed searching for it among the dozens of wooden crates they had brought ashore, the Arnauds pulled aside the young-looking officer and the strong blond man. The first was Lieutenant Secundino Angel Cardona, stationed in Clipperton for over six months and assigned as Ramón’s assistant. With six men under his command, he had come to the island before his superior in order to ready the necessary installations for the arrival of Alicia and the incoming troops.

  Cardona was a good-looking guy, his hair arranged in the fashion of a neighborhood bully. His impeccable white teeth produced an open, frank smile, and not even his slightly prominent ears nor a few pockmarks managed to detract from his handsome presence.

  The blond one was a twenty-eight-year-old German fellow, Gustav Schultz, who represented the English company exploiting the guano, the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd. He had been established in Clipperton for four years, in charge of processing and exporting the product, and of a number of workers that fluctuated from fifteen, at best, to only two or three when business was not so good. Beneath his bushy, gruff eyebrows, his eyes looked gentle. He smiled softly, balancing on his enormous feet like on a platform, and seemed to expect the newcomer to make a speech.

  Arnaud knew that one of the reasons he had been assigned to Clipperton was his knowledge of several languages. More than for international litigation—that was the province of diplomats in Europe—he would need them for communicating with the representatives of the guano company and the supervision of their activities in the name of the Mexican government. He greeted Schultz in strained English, taking extreme care in his pronunciation.

  Schultz’s loud laughter interrupted him. Then in an incomprehensible pastiche of German, English, Italian, and Spanish, he mentioned something about palm trees and laughed again with great relish. Disconcerted, Ramón grew silent, and Lieutenant Cardona rushed to explain.

  “Do not worry, Captain, nobody understands the blond guy—none of the workers, not even his wife. He lives here surrounded by foreigners. His men are all Italians who have not learned Spanish. He has in his head such a jumble of languages that he is the Tower of Babel personified. But he works hard and keeps good company records. At least we can understand his numbers, and that way we find out what is going on. Every time you see him, he tells the story of those palm trees. He brought them himself, it seems, and then planted them over there.” Cardona pointed his index finger at a group of ten or twelve coconut palms, the only trees on the island. Schultz was looking at Cardona and nodding, either in approval of or stunned by what he heard, as if he, too, did not understand anything other people were saying.

  The troops finally came up with the flag. Those who had just landed stood in formation next to the soldiers already assembled. One of the new arrivals, no older than fourteen, who had made his living as a mariachi player before signing up, was now the army bugler and made the call to attention.

  “Platoon! Fix . . . bayonets!” ordered Arnaud, trying to instill some life into those present.

  With dissonant metallic clatter, the bayonets were attached to the muzzles of their rifles. The flag was hoisted, green, white, and red, with the eagle at its center seemingly pecking at the serpent, all shining brightly in the sun. The adolescent bugle boy played the national anthem with surprising elan. In a timid voice, as if breathed in, the others sang, “Think, O dear homeland, that Heaven has sent you a soldier in every son . . .”

  Arnaud would have liked to feel moved, but only succeeded in feeling worried. Are these the sons of our homeland? he wondered. They look like a sorry lot. He took a good look around him: about thirty half-naked people, a lot of crabs, a depository of bird droppings, and a large rock. That was all.

  This is Mexican land, and I am its governor, he thought, with a creeping feeling between ridicule and pride. It’s slim pickings, but still Mexican pickings, as long as I live. Let them send the whole French army if they wish, but nobody will get me out of here. They can torture me, but they will not get me out.

  Now he was moved. His eyes welling, he stumbled over the words of a speech appropriate for the occasion, then shouted, “Viva México!” three times. And thus he closed the ceremony of taking territorial possession of Clipperton Island, formerly known as the Isle of Passion. It was over, and after leaving orders for unloading the cargo, Arnaud, together with Cardona, started on a reconnaissance tour. First, they were to take Alicia to her new home, then to inspect the constructions, and, finally, to get together with Schultz at his cabin. He had said good-bye still dwelling on the palm trees story and uttering, from the depths of his throat, the word “drinks” several times.

  “He means that he is inviting us for a toast,” explained the lieutenant.

  They started walking toward the southwest of the island, where the Arnauds were going to reside. On their way, they passed by the sheds used to store the guano, by the workers’ quarters, and by the soldiers’ barracks. These were flimsy rudimentary structures, barely able to stand and offering scant protection from the elements. All around there were large earthenware jars to collect rainwater, besides garbage, dogs, and a few skinny pigs running after the crabs for a meal.

  An air of poverty permeated everything. Alicia was then amazed to see, solitary in the distance, the house that would be her home. It was a wonderful one-story structure in fine varnished pine, with a pitched roof. It faced an open stretch of beach and rested on stilts about five feet above the sands, safe from tides and crabs. There was an ample veranda all around, and, inside, the sunny and airy rooms were interconnected, each with its own access to the veranda. They were all spacious except one, which later became Alicia’s favorite refuge. It was a small study next to the master bedroom, with large stained-glass windows in various colors, all facing the ocean.

  It was not precisely a mansion, but in the midst of everything else it seemed like a sample of Oriental splendor. There was nothing in the house that was not functional and in good order, nothing left to improvisation: everything had been made with care, to perfection. It had belonged to the preceding representative of the guano company, an Englishman who returned to Europe when the German Gustav Schultz came to replace him. The former owner, Arthur James Brander, was persnickety and a lover of luxury. He had accepted the position from the other side of the planet on condition that he be allowed to take with him a ready-to-assemble house of the best quality, and that the company would also pay for his Filipino servant’s fare. The man was a devoted servant who allowed his master to win at chess and who, even in Clipperton, served him his tea with just-baked muffins, promptly at five o’clock.

  The Englishman had set the house in the only place on the island where the opaque, gray Pacific Ocean became translucent with underwater glimmerings, and where the unhealthy, suffocating smells from the lagoon were blown away by the breeze from the trade winds. An expert carpenter himself, Brander had complemented the basic structure with details of refinement: built-in bookcases and shelves, carved shutters for the windows. For the veranda facing east, he had brought from Nicaragua a hammock where he would lie, a shot of authentic Scotch whiskey in hand, to watch the sunrise. On the other side, on the corridor facing west, he enjoyed another hammock, another Scotch, and sunsets.

  Within an hour, boxes and trunks filled with the Arnauds’ paraphernalia invaded the corridors of the Brander house. In the following days Ramón watched, crestfallen, as Alicia toiled with the eagerness of a worker ant and the nimbleness of a squirrel, moving things around and locating them almost anywhere but the places he had so meticulously planned.

  She ordered the pots of geraniums to be unloaded where he had thought of constructing a chicken coop; she placed beds and mattresses where he wanted to have the dining room; kept her embroidery and sewing fabrics in the drawers of a desk he had thought his; housed chickens and ducks where he had the toolshed in mind; and stored preserves and marmalades on the shelves he had reserved for medications.

  “Please stop for just a m
inute, honey,” he begged her, “and let’s have some lime blossom tea, which will soothe us while we put some sense into this pandemonium.”

  She sat beside him, perspiring, listened to him uneasily, and five minutes later was again on her feet emptying trunks, hanging curtains, planting lettuce. She ordered her Pianola unloaded and placed in one corner, then in another; then she changed her mind and ordered it taken out again.

  “You are running around like a chicken without a head, without thinking,” Ramón said to her on the third day of seeing her incessant rushing around, not even allowing time to eat or sleep.

  “And you think and talk, give opinions and give orders, but you do not do anything,” she responded, and in this way they opened a discussion that they were to repeat hundreds of times, give or take a few words, during the years they lived together on the isle.

  When practically everything was unpacked and they were close to having the house ready, she discovered, together with other pieces of linen in the bottom of the trunk, the saintly bedsheet, the one with the matrimonial keyhole in the center. Far from Orizaba, from Doña Carlota, from the Ten Commandments and the Seven Sacraments, Alicia had completely forgotten about it. Seeing it again made her feel guilty, but at this point, she thought it absurd to start using it, after so many nights without it.

  For a moment she thought of giving it to the camp followers, but changed her mind, considering its fine embroidery. In the end she decided to use it in the dining room as a tablecloth for big occasions, placing a heavy pheasant centerpiece to cover the hole.

  Clipperton, 1908

  AFTER BEING ANCHORED for three days outside the reef barrier and passively allowing the breakers to jolt her at will, the Corrigan II, relieved of her cargo, set sail for the return to Acapulco. From the dock, Ramón Arnaud saw her depart. The gentleman’s agreement he had made with his superior and advisor, Colonel Avalos, was that every two months, three at the most, without fail or delay, either that ship or El Demócrata, also from the Mexican Navy, would bring to Clipperton all the supplies necessary for survival.

  It was well established that from such an isle, a lazy, barren piece of rock, they could not get much more than crabs, salt, and polluted water. The arrival of the ship would be like the umbilical cord that would keep them alive. As the Corrigan II sailed away, Ramón felt that his only connection with the outside world was drifting farther and farther out of reach, lost behind an ocean wall.

  When the ship could no longer be seen, Ramón realized that he felt offended, hurt, abandoned like a dog. His nomination as governor, the promotion to the rank of captain, the interview with Porfirio Díaz, all seemed now like fancy decoys covering up the stark reality: he had been totally forsaken in the last place he would have chosen to be, had he the freedom to choose.

  The old feeling that he had been made to pay too dearly for his mistakes returned, and he ran, over and over in his mind like a rat in a maze, through all the twists and turns. That old resentment knew very well all the labyrinths in his gray matter because he himself had trained it each and every day and night during his incarceration in Santiago Tlatelolco. And during every hour of his training as an army private. It was a resentment so close to him, so domestic and familiar, Ramón thought now, that he had not ceased nurturing it for a second. And this truth surprised him.

  Since he was a child he had entertained the suspicion that someone, some powerful and abstract being, was cruelly punishing him. And now, at the Clipperton dock, this punishment acquired the shape of an old and lost meaning in the English language, derived from the Spanish. It was a combination of just a few letters, unknown to him until a few days ago and which, notwithstanding—it was very clear now—had been his destiny from the beginning. This word, which sounded cabalistic to him, was “marooned,” derived from “cimaroon”—in turn derived from the Spanish “cimarrón,” or runaway slave. And by some logical play of association, “to maroon” also referred to the capital punishment meted out to traitors by English pirates in the Caribbean: they abandoned them on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, with nothing but a few sips of water in a bottle and a gun loaded with only one bullet, to use when the torture and the agony became unbearable.

  “Marooned,” Arnaud repeated to himself, fascinated by its sound. “Marooned,” and a sticky malaise took hold of him. Standing there facing the Pacific Ocean alone, he offered no resistance. A hot wind ruffled his eyelashes, buzzed over his ears, kept flapping on the nape of his neck the kerchief he was wearing to protect himself from the sun. An endless series of waves, resigned and identical, crashed against the boards under his feet, and he observed them, mesmerized, and let them lull him with their monotonous murmur: marooned, they whispered, marooned.

  He was comfortably installed in his melancholy and without any intention of getting out of it, when he saw Alicia in the distance trying to carry a barrel heavier than she was up the steep steps leading to the house. She would advance two steps and the force of gravity made her go backward three, just to start again, unflaggingly. Ramón thought that the diligence his wife applied to the task at hand was an irrational defiance of the sweltering heat, that her useless doggedness disrupted the relaxing inertia that the heat imposed on everything else. He saw her as being obsessed with her futile endeavor, her porcelain complexion beaded with pearls of sweat, and completely oblivious of the departing ship, of the resentments and premonitions that were asphyxiating him, of the cruelty of the Caribbean pirates and of the human race in general. Why does she persist in not letting the soldiers take care of those tasks? How can she possibly not understand that on a disastrous day like today such things as barrels don’t deserve our attention? Ramón wondered anxiously, and ran to help her.

  By the time he reached her, she had already succeeded in carrying her load up to the porch.

  The days began to go a little faster. Not only had the ship departed, leaving them in God’s hands, but two or three hundred yards away from the place where it had been anchored, there still arose, now and forever, the silhouette of the Kinkora. Or her ghost. Or whatever was left of her. On a pitch-black night a few years ago, the Japanese ship did not see the isle and fell into its trap, lunging against it as if it wasn’t there. Clipperton had lain in wait for her, crouching and invisible, then ensnared her in its reefs and tore into her hull with the sharp fierceness of its corals.

  Haunted by the somber, unavoidable presence of the Kinkora, through whose dilapidated timbers the wind whistled sad tunes of shipwrecks, Arnaud decided to dismantle her board by board. He could no longer stand the ominous energy that he perceived as coming from the wreck, which made his head burst and even gave him a toothache. He would remove that grim monument to failure from the coastline and neutralize its influence, and would use whatever he could recover to construct decent living quarters for his soldiers.

  As usual, Ramón had suddenly shifted without any warning from a state of depression to one of euphoria, and during the following days he and his men were earnestly dedicated to their task. And from the worm-eaten timbers of the Kinkora—once cleaned and sanded—they built a small house for each soldier, with its oil lamp, its coal burner, and its cistern to store rainwater.

  While Lieutenant Cardona and the others were in charge of the masonry work and the carpentry, Arnaud tried to solve the problem now annoying him: the crabs, which crawled around everywhere without any respect—not even for the soup pots, the clothes chests, or the babies’ cradles—and also fell inside to die in the rainwater tanks, their small corpses polluting the pure waters. Ramón designed traps and fortresses, and after several failed attempts at creating barriers to the thousands of persistent crabs, finally one morning he left the toolshed carrying some ingenious wooden covers with double gratings that attained their purpose.

  In spite of the hellish oppressive heat and the ill-tempered breezes, Arnaud and his Clipperton men persisted in their construction frenzy. After the soldiers’ houses, they continued with a Decauville
track brought from Acapulco. They labored hand in hand with Schultz and his workers, and they managed to make a toylike train, which hauled its row of small, uncovered wagons on a track that extended from the soft mounds of guano on the north of the isle and followed the eastern shore down to the storehouse, where the cargo was dried and processed, next to the dock.

  Then came the reconstruction of the lighthouse on top of the big rock on the southern coast. The old one had an obsolete mechanism, already in total disrepair. Arnaud restored it by installing new prisms and burners on the old base. He ordered the construction of six sections of stairs, ten steps each, to civilize the steep ascent to the lighthouse, which had been a suicidal enterprise due to the slippery rock. He filled the tank with oil, and one starry and moonless night, he lit the burners.

  Down below, men, women, and children were sitting on the beach in mystical silence around a fire they had built to drive away the mosquitoes. Behind them they had made pavilions with their rifles, leaning them against one another in threes and fours. They saw the big beacon light up and remained there for several hours, staring as if hypnotized at the pallid light as it turned. This was an important occasion. They no longer were a speck lost in the big nothingness. Now they were offering to the world an assertive testimonial: the Clipperton lighthouse, a little candle flickering in the midst of the infinite darkness where ocean and sky merged.

  That night, at the foot of the lighted beacon, Lieutenant Arnaud commanded peremptorily that the light never be allowed to grow dark, and right then named one of his trusted men as the lighthouse keeper. He was a black soldier from the state of Colima named Victoriano Alvarez. So that he could attend to his duties with the necessary zeal, Arnaud assigned as his living quarters a small sheltered cabin at the base of the big rock. It was, in fact, a cave inside the rock, and he adapted its interior and added a log-cabin facade. The soldiers called it “the lighthouse lair.”