Isle of Passion

by Laura Restrepo

  “Secundino Cardona.”

  “Are we hooked up?”

  “Okay with me.”

  “Let’s shake on it.”

  “Here.”

  Clipperton, 1914

  “THEY ARE KILLING each other! They are killing each other!”

  The women came running and cackling as noisily as barnyard fowl.

  “They are killing each other!”

  “Who? Who are killing each other?” Arnaud, who was trying to give his house a new roof, jumped down from the primitive scaffolding. “Will one of you stop shouting and tell me who’s killing whom?”

  But the women were already running to the north, and he had to run after them. Alicia followed him.

  When they approached the Schultzes’ home, they could hear the howls, the insults, the blows. Then they saw Schultz and his wife, Daría Pinzón, both in the buff, hitting each other hard and fighting like two rabid dogs. The man, growling and foaming at the mouth, held the woman by the hair and was spanking her with his enormous hand. She screeched and scratched at him, and bit his skin off. He seemed not to notice and kept on spanking her buttocks red. She gained some ground and with all the might of both her hands, grabbed the German by his testicles, determined not to let go until Judgment Day. He howled like a fox in heat, and after several useless attempts to free himself from Daría, he finally pushed her away so hard, he sent her rolling like a ball of flesh and hair among the coral reefs.

  Standing in a circle around them, the women watched the scene, encouraging one or the other party.

  “Cut his balls off, Daría! Cut his balls off, because he’s a bastard!”

  “Hit the bitch, gringo, teach her not to cheat on you!”

  Arnaud, who had picked up a heavy stick, took advantage of a momentary pause, went up to Schultz and hit him hard on the head. Schultz keeled over, melting like a wax mountain. Ramón, who had dropped to his knees, was trying to get up when Daría Pinzón lunged on top of him, crushing him against the ground with the weight of her mare’s legs.

  “Don’t you meddle in this, Captain,” she screamed. “This fight is between my man and me.”

  Arnaud managed to turn her over, and, climbing onto her back after a scuffle, twisted her arm backward and immobilized her by pressing his knees against her shoulders.

  “I have to meddle,” he gasped. “This is a matter of public order.”

  “This gringo is crazy, Captain. He tried to kill me.”

  “Shut up, you’re no saint. Go get dressed! Aren’t you ashamed? Bring me a rope to tie Schultz up, now that he’s out.”

  The women dispersed. Daría returned, half covered with a blanket, bringing the rope. Arnaud tied Schultz, who was still unconscious, pulling hard and winding the rope around many times until he had him well wrapped, like a tamale. He dragged him to the entrance of the house and tied him to a post. The man opened his eyes, looked around, and tried to get up, but the ropes did not let him.

  Alicia, who saw everything from a distance, brought Arnaud a gourd with water. He drank from it first, and then offered it to Schultz, who took a sip, and another, and spit the third one in Arnaud’s face.

  “Beast,” he told him, and slapped him so hard his face turned.

  “More water,” Schultz begged.

  “What?”

  “More water.”

  “You better learn, damn it, to say please.”

  “Please.”

  “All right, but I’m warning you, if you spit at me again, I’ll bust your mouth and your teeth will fly.”

  “I won’t.”

  Arnaud put the gourd to his lips, and Schultz took several sips.

  “Captain, the gringo is all yours,” Daría said. “Do what you can with him. Get another woman to take care of him. I’m getting out of here.”

  “Oh really. Out of here? Can you tell me how? Walking on water, like Jesus Christ?”

  “That’s my business,” the woman responded, and she left, walking fast as if she knew where she was going.

  “Stop wiggling your ass, Daría Pinzón, with your lewd ways you’re driving the men wild,” Arnaud shouted.

  “You see?” Alicia piped in. “Didn’t I tell you? That loose woman is showing you her ass. . . . Now you admit it? How many times have I said so and you denied it! Tell me, Ramón, how many times did I tell you?”

  “Whatever was said before the hurricane does not count. Now everything has to be reorganized,” Arnaud answered, trying to cut the old familiar argument as best he could.

  This was not the first incident involving Schultz. It was becoming an everyday occurrence, and Arnaud thought Daría was right: that German fellow had lost his mind. To begin with, after the storm he had developed an animosity against whatever was left of the train and the tracks. Displaying the same dedication with which he had installed and repaired them a thousand times, now he was pulling the tracks off and hurling them like javelins into the sea. When he got tired of destroying things, he lunged indiscriminately at men, women, animals, and the castaways. They especially received the brunt of his violent hostility.

  Alicia had her own interpretation.

  “This poor man is a work machine,” she said. “He was removed from his post, and he doesn’t know what to do with all that energy pent up inside him.”

  Daría Pinzón, in turn, blamed the lack of food.

  “White people are used to eating a lot,” she explained, “and hunger makes them crazy. Schultz hates the castaways for only one reason: because of them we have less to eat.”

  “It’s not because of them. It’s because of the hurricane,” Arnaud corrected, not wanting the hostility toward the newcomers to spread.

  “It’s the same,” Daría countered. “Castaways and hurricane, hurricane and castaways. Both came together, and now we go hungry.”

  In fact, most of the foodstuffs had been lost. Not everything, though, as Arnaud had feared at the beginning. Many sacks of grain got wet and rotted. Of the garden patch and its fruits and vegetables, there was not even a trace, and the ocean had dragged away many cans of food and other provisions. There was no more milk, no sugar, no flour, and very little coffee. But they still had some dry meat, corn, canned goods, and beans in enough quantities to allow minimal sustenance for the old as well as the new inhabitants for two or three months. On condition, of course, that the distribution be made with Calvinist niggardliness and Franciscan austerity. The situation was one of famine, but not of starvation, except for the dramatic lack of vitamin C. They could get by—Arnaud kept reassuring everyone—until the next visit of El Demócrata or the Corrigan II.

  The castaways turned out to be Dutch, even though their ruined schooner—the Nokomis—flew the U.S. flag. Her captain was an old salt named Jens Jensen, with whom Arnaud was able to communicate in English. He found out that Jensen trafficked in diverse farm products and that he was taking his cargo to the other side of the world. The night of the hurricane, the Nokomis was sailing from Costa Rica to San Francisco, and the story of how the crew had survived did not differ much from what Victoriano Alvarez had guessed.

  Jensen’s wife was named Mary, like the Virgin, and she walked around, transparent and angelical, on the harsh Clipperton shores, her gaze lost beyond the horizon. The couple had two daughters, Mary, aged six, and Emma, aged four, and in spite of having a pale complexion like their mother’s, they joined the children’s hunt for crabs in the crevices, as well as their other earthly games.

  The twelve Dutch folks were peaceful, well-mannered people. In spite of the pitiful physical state in which they arrived in Clipperton, they were grateful for the hospitality and started to work from the beginning at reconstructing the buildings that had not been hopelessly destroyed. They recovered medications and some clothes from their ship, and placed everything at Captain Arnaud’s disposal. They participated as much as they could, and did not ask for more than was given them. They dismantled the wreck of the Nokomis and used her timber in the reconstruction of the i
sle. Even though they did not intend to annoy people, time passed and they were still there, eating. They ate as little as everybody else, but they ate, and that, for this hungry lot, was the worst thing they could do.

  One evening Tirsa Rendón took some food to Secundino Cardona, who, despite some setbacks, was recovering after his miraculous rescue, thanks to his animal strength, Arnaud’s care, and the prayers and sacrifices Tirsa offered to the Saint of Cabora. She helped him sit down against the wall, and gave him a full plate of beans and tortillas.

  “You are lucky after all because, since you are wounded, you are the only one who eats a full ration. The rest of us have only one third of this.”

  “That makes sense. Otherwise we’ll soon die of starvation.”

  “The others don’t think that way. They are saying that the officers and the foreigners have enough food to eat, while the troops don’t.”

  “Then tell Ramón to send me the same amount everybody else gets.”

  “He already had a fight because of this. He found out that a rumor was going around that you were the pampered favorite. That you weren’t doing anything, while they had to work, and that you ate for three.”

  “Sons of bitches.”

  “That is exactly what Arnaud called them, he doesn’t mince words anymore. He used to speak with elegance; now he’s as foul-mouthed as a fishwife, cursing and calling anyone who crosses his path a bastard. The others are not much better. You’d have to see how the people have changed. As if the devil had peed on them. Victoriano is the one who protests the most and commands those who are disgruntled. Last night someone busted the padlocked door of the pharmacy, where the food reserves are kept, and stole a few cans of food.”

  “What rotten luck. We just had to struggle with the hurricane, and now we have to struggle over food. Who do you think did it?”

  “Who knows. Someone left a sign on the wall that says, ‘For the people’s welfare,’ and signed it ‘The Hand That Strangles.’”

  “Then we’re in trouble.”

  “Yes indeed. At daybreak Arnaud noticed it, and you should have seen him during the closed distribution, his eyes were on fire. He ordered a general inspection and said that anyone who has stored food cans would be whipped raw. He gave the warning that he, personally, with his two God-given hands, was going to squeeze the balls of The Hand That Strangles until the last grain of rice was returned. So the thief better stop stealing and fooling around with signs on the walls.”

  “And what about The Hand That Strangles? That’s funny, all right. Did they finally find anything?”

  “No, nothing. The women say it’s Victoriano, and others swear that it was the gringo.”

  “Schultz?”

  “Yes, him.”

  “He’s no gringo, he’s German.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “You don’t know anything about geography.”

  “Well, gringo or German, the thing is that he’s a turncoat. When the Indians here opposed Arnaud and the other white men, Schultz took the side of the Indians.”

  “What a life! And then an Indian like me takes sides with the white men.”

  “Schultz is in cahoots with Victoriano. Arnaud can silence the soldier with a couple of shouts, but nobody can control the German fellow. He says that he’s a civilian and wipes his ass with military discipline. That no one can order him around. That if it were up to him, he would dump those Dutch people into the ocean and make them leave the same way they came.”

  “And how come people can now understand what he says?”

  “They don’t. Victoriano tells them. Maybe that German is only saying Hail Marys and Victoriano translates him the way he wants to. Who knows.”

  The animosity against the Dutch was growing like a red tide. The Clipperton people closed their eyes when they went past the Nokomis, not to see the wreck. They also closed their eyes not to see Captain Jensen’s face whenever they met him. Alicia suspected that the source of the problem was deeper than the scarcity of food, and she talked to Ramón about it.

  “There is something else,” she said. “People don’t just hate them, they are scared to death of them.”

  The fear was growing at night in what was left of the soldiers’ barracks. A story had circulated that kept men, women, and children awake and terrified. They didn’t know how it got started, but it was repeated in the firm belief that it was true. The story is about a Dutch captain whose ship gets caught in a storm. The crew begins to shout and plead with the captain to look for a safe refuge, but he, in his mad arrogance, refuses, and they all die. For this he is condemned to sail the high seas for all eternity, always trying to weather terrible storms. He is the Flying Dutchman. He feeds himself molten iron and drinks only bile. He can return to land only once every seven years, and wherever he goes, he brings God’s wrath with him and death to all who see his ghostly ship.

  The Clipperton men put two and two together and it all fit, increasing their fear. It was the year 1914, and fourteen is a multiple of seven: this was the year of the Dutchman’s return. It was the Nokomis that had brought the hurricane and the hunger: they were God’s punishments. Jens Jensen was indeed the Flying Dutchman, and they were all condemned.

  Arnaud did whatever he could to assuage their fears.

  “What is the problem?” he asked the soldiers at daybreak as they mustered, pale and haggard, at the call of reveille. “If the Dutchman eats iron and drinks bile, so much the better. He won’t finish up our food.”

  But it was useless. The Clipperton people had changed. They were now more mistrustful and selfish, doubly shrewd, eager to take advantage, spoiling for a fight. They had also changed physically: they had the looks now of having suffered damage for life and because of life, and of having been made beggars by nature itself, conditions that were irreversible. It was particularly evident in the children. The hurricane broke their ties with civilization and in twenty-four hours, twenty-four centuries were reversed. Given the emergency situation in which the isle was left, the adults kept forgetting to bathe and dress them, to regulate their schedules, to teach them and correct them, and by the time they realized this, their own children had become an unfriendly lot of semi-wild, naked creatures who ran around the rocks without caring what time of day it was, ate raw fish, and went in and out of the ocean waters with amphibian ease.

  Their domestic animals, freed from cages and corrals, wandered at large around the isle, totally unrestrained. Since they stopped receiving any care or food from humans, they lost feathers and fur, did not preen, and became frail. In order to survive, they had to forgo the usual behaviors of their species. They sharpened their hunting skills, and it was quite a sight to see dogs and roosters attacking and devouring crabs. The women put their babies in high places for fear the pigs would bite them. Even the reproductive functions of animals became affected, and some people insisted that there were hens pairing with boobies.

  If living beings changed, so did the environment. The Dutch were so industrious in their repair efforts that in a few weeks the home of the Arnauds, part of the barracks, the dock, and some of the depots were again standing. But they could not perform miracles, and the reconstructed Clipperton looked like a caricature of itself. Now the houses were horrendous combinations of varied patches and had been reduced to minimal structures very flimsily held together, when compared to their original condition. Inside they were empty, with nothing left to fill them other than the putrid smell of the lagoon, and outside they looked crooked, tottering. Everything on the isle was diminished and impoverished, trapped in the aura of a nostalgic shantytown.

  After the fight between Schultz and Daría, Arnaud started injecting the German with sedatives in doses suitable for elephants, and ordered his men to add to his drinking water a few tablespoons of passionflower extract. In spite of which Schultz stayed calm only when sleeping, and as soon as he opened one eye, he began destroying anything within his reach. Once a pig was sniffing around him and he s
mashed its head with a clenched fist. Another day it was hens. Sergeant Irra’s wife reported that the German had attempted to slash the throat of one of her children, but nobody believed her because she was a notorious liar and because, deep down, everybody knew that Schultz was not a murderer.

  One night he broke the rope that tied him to his house, and he appeared in the barracks, naked and screaming, causing more terror than the Abominable Snowman. The soldiers caught him, sedated him, and, instead of ropes, put a chain around his neck. Arnaud ordered that he be untied from the post every morning, and that three men, holding fast to his chain, were to take him for a walk. That dangerous and exhausting task was soon discontinued, and Schultz remained confined day and night.

  After a month, he had calmed himself again and spent his time going around the post and repeating the same words: “I’m bored, I’m bored, and I’m bored. I’m bored, I’m bored, and I’m bored.”

  Then the soldiers brought a bed closer to him so he would not have to sleep on the floor, and those in charge of feeding him were able to take cups of water and plates of food to him without fear that he would smash their heads with them. He showed improvement, and it was decided to assign a woman to take care of him, of bathing and feeding him.

  Daría Pinzón didn’t even want to know of this. She was not frightened by stories of Flying Dutchmen, and had started a relationship with a fat one, full of warts, by the name of Halvorsen. She fixed up her daughter, Jesusa, who had reached puberty, with Knowles, a lanky one with a big nose.

  The one chosen to take care of Gustav Schultz was Altagracia Quiroz.

  Altagracia was the young girl the Arnauds had hired the year before at the Hotel San Agustín to help them with their children. She had come to Clipperton with them, with the incentive of being paid a double salary, and for the thrill of getting to know the sea. But she regretted it. The sea did not seem like much, and on the isle the paper bills she could accumulate from her wages were good for nothing. She was fourteen, short and rather plain, though she had that beautiful head of hair. Yet people were not aware of it because she kept it covered.