Isle of Passion

by Laura Restrepo

  “A ship, a ship!” Ramón suddenly shouted.

  “No kidding!” piped in Cardona. “Where—?”

  “I don’t see it anymore, but I swear I saw it.”

  They both rose to their feet in order to look, cupping their hands to protect their eyes from the sun’s glare.

  “There it goes again!” Arnaud said quickly. “It’s a big one! Look at it: How come you don’t see it? It’s sailing from east to west . . .”

  “I don’t see a thing. . . . Is it coming?”

  “I’m afraid not. . . . It’s sailing away, damn it!” Arnaud was beside himself. “Let’s light a bonfire, Cardona! Let’s make some smoke signals.”

  “All right, but I do not see any ship,” Cardona said, and began to start a fire. Alicia, Tirsa, and the other women came, attracted by the hollering.

  “Bring rags, pieces of wood, whatever you can find that will burn,” Cardona asked them. “We are signaling to a ship.”

  “What ship?”

  “The one Ramón is looking at.”

  Arnaud had walked away, but he came back running. His heart was bursting, and the excitement made him stammer.

  “Now I’m sure!” he screamed. “There is a ship out there, I swear to God.”

  “Are you really sure, Ramón? Do not joke about this,” Cardona said.

  “Let’s go, Cardona, let’s not waste any more time with bonfires. Let’s follow the ship on the raft.”

  “On the raft?” The one screaming now was the lieutenant. “On those four tied boards? We could not follow a ship on that, even if there was one.”

  “It’s still far away. If we go straight out, we can intercept its course. Let’s go, or we’ll miss it! It’s now or never!”

  “We’d better keep making a bonfire, Ramón. . . .”

  “Are you insane? A ship is passing us by, our only hope for survival, and you want to keep burning rags?”

  “But I don’t see any ship and to go into that rough sea is hell.”

  “Now’s the time!”

  “Wait, brother, let’s not die—”

  “Nobody is going to die, and least of all now. If people on the ship see us, we’ll be saved!”

  “Excuse me, aren’t you seeing the phantom ship of the Flying Dutchman?”

  “Damn you, Cardona. You are more stubborn than a mule, and dumber than a Chamula Indian!”

  “Stop the insults, you’re overexcited.”

  “Forget I said it. But please bring the blasted paddles, damn it!”

  Lieutenant Cardona complied. “Here, but I really don’t see any ship. I don’t know, Ramón, I asked Alicia and Tirsa, and they don’t see it either.”

  “Don’t mind them. Women see well up close but very badly at a distance.”

  “You’re seeing just what you want to see.”

  “No sermons now. They are going to see us, and they will rescue us. We are saved, Secundino. Let’s go!”

  “But the sea is too rough, my friend.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let’s go!”

  “But look at the ocean, it’s a killer!”

  “No more words,” said Captain Arnaud, now calmly and with authority. “We leave on the raft, and that’s an order. Where are the women? Where is the bonfire?” He was shouting again. “What does everybody think, that this can wait until tomorrow?”

  The women, bringing rubble to light the fire, took a look at the horizon. They moved without conviction, like robots.

  “Nobody believes me, is that it? You’ll see. Let’s go, Cardona.”

  The two men hastily reinforced the ties that held the boards together.

  “It’s ready,” announced Arnaud.

  “Jesus Christ! You’re really insane now, Ramón. All right, I’ll go with you, but I insist I don’t see any ship. I’ll do it for what you said before about us both living or—”

  “We both live or we both live,” interrupted Arnaud. “We’ll all live, little brother. Our misery is over.”

  Ramón went to his wife.

  “I’ll be back right away,” he told her. “Get the children ready, because we are leaving today. Do you hear, Alicia? Yes indeed, today. I’ll go to your father’s, we’ll send the children to school. You’ll have the life you deserve.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, her voice tight.

  “It’s easy. Once I wanted to stay, and I did it for Mexico. But now I want to leave. I want to leave for you.”

  “But in what—”

  “In that ship, look at it!”

  Ramón spoke with conviction, his words carried his fervor, and Alicia, who had not seen the ship, did finally see it. All iron, enormous, and close. Reflected in the depth of her husband’s pupils.

  He kissed her quickly on her forehead and went into the water dragging the raft. Alicia did not move, did not say a word, frozen in her anguish.

  While he limped on the beach trying to catch up with Arnaud, Secundino Angel Cardona turned back to look at Tirsa.

  “Good-bye, my pretty one,” he hollered. “Love you forever!”

  The Last Man

  Colima, Today

  COLIMA IS A SMALL CITY, white and peaceful, with the same palm trees, the same air and rhythm of so many cities by the sea. But Colima is far away from the sea: two hours inland from the port of Manzanillo on the Pacific Coast. I am now at the bus station in the outskirts of town. It is very hot, and I don’t have any specific target address. I came here in search of Victoriano Alvarez’s past, and I have only a few details on the black soldier’s life before Clipperton: that he was born here, that he left in his youth and never returned, and that he had no children. That’s all. I tell the cabdriver to take me to the zócalo because the main plazas preserve, as if in formaldehyde, the old town stories. I walk along the streets around the plaza, where little has changed since the turn of the century. The heat is oppressive, and I can’t help but think that it would be easier to try to find a needle in a haystack. Seventy-one years after his death, who’s going to recall anything about this unknown soldier? Who’s going to remember one of the least memorable of its citizens?

  At the Portal Medellín there is a place that seems to have witnessed several generations of townspeople. It is a general store with an oversized and weathered dark wood counter. Outside, a sign reads, “Here is the traditional, renowned, and prestigious Casa Ceballos, open since 1893.” Inside you can find anything, from hardware to underwear. The owner, Don Carlos Ceballos, inherited the business over fifty years ago. He is a well-educated, polite gentleman, like those of yesteryear. I tell him what I am looking for and ask for his help, and he suggests that I come back in the afternoon. He is going to gather a number of people who might have some information.

  Hours later, Don Carlos has assembled a group of friends and townspeople about his age at the Hotel Ceballos, next to the store. They are important local people, and a few historians and journalists.

  “Last name Alvarez, from Colima, and black?” they want to be sure. “There is only one family, the illegitimate descendants of our illustrious leader, General Manuel Alvarez, our first state governor.”

  “But the Alvarezes from Colima are not pure black,” they point out, “they are mulattoes.”

  In the center of Villa Alvarez Plaza, cast in bronze and ruling over the town from his pedestal, is soldier Victoriano Alvarez’s paternal grandfather, General Manuel Alvarez. In the assembly room of the Colima town hall, there he is again, in an oil painting with his name in gold. He is a thickset man with sharp features. And he is milky white.

  At the corner of Venustiano Carranza and 5 de Mayo lie the ruins of what was his home, a one-story colonial structure. The facade is still standing, but the interior has crumbled down due to the Colima earthquakes. The bases of the walls, like a blueprint, are still visible, indicating where the patios, the kitchen, the bedrooms, and the sitting rooms were. The family rooms were toward the front of the house, next to the street. That is, the general and his successive
wives lived there—he became a widower three times and married four times—together with his numerous offspring.

  At the back of the house, surrounding the patio, is where the help lived: servants, chambermaids, grooms. The general, great patriarch and stud, fathered children everywhere he went. Willing or not, no female escaped him. At night and in haste, he used to sneak across to the back side of the house, to ravish the young servants, take care of the older ones, and make love to a black maid called Aleja, who was faithful to him all her life.

  His wives did not live long; three of them died in childbirth. But not Aleja. She prevailed, surviving her childbirths, and bearing him countless children. The general recognized some and gave them his name. They were his illegitimate, mulatto descendants, among them Victoriano Alvarez, father of the Clipperton Victoriano.

  General Alvarez was named governor on July 15, 1857, and five weeks later, during his siesta, his political enemies rioted and gathered at the plaza shouting their slogan, “Law and Religion.” Annoyed, the general woke up, and when informed of the news, he was furious. Livid with rage and without waiting for anyone, he loaded his guns, jumped on his horse, and rushed toward the plaza to end the revolt all by himself. He didn’t get past the first intersection. A gun blast received him, and a bullet nested in his heart. The family went to the church and asked to let him have the last rites and absolution administered postmortem, as was the custom when Christians died suddenly or violently, and to allow his being laid to rest in the cemetery. The parish priest denied the request because the general, a liberal through and through, had been excommunicated for supporting the federal constitution. Finally the priest acceded, in exchange for two thousand pesos, provided they let him whip the demons out of the dead body. So after receiving the bullet that killed him, General Alvarez had to withstand a whipping, and then he was able to go down peacefully into his sepulcher.

  His fourth wife, Panchita Córdoba, was young when he died, and soon married Filomeno Bravo. Good-looking Filomeno, reputedly the handsomest man in Mexico, held fast to the household’s same macho and big-daddy traditions practiced by the deceased general. His blue eyes and golden beard made him resemble Emperor Maximilian himself, which served him well in order to reach Empress Carlota’s bed no less. After this, there was no woman he could not claim. He was shrewd and resourceful enough to court them and deceive them all. One afternoon he picked up an unknown, pretty woman all dressed in red. He pulled her onto his horse and took her to the outskirts of town, where he made love to her in an open field. He was seen by neighbors passing by. Before anyone could relay the story to Panchita, his wife, Filomeno rushed home, ordered her to put on a red dress, pulled her onto his horse, and took her on horseback to the outskirts of town, where he made love to her in an open field. That way, if anyone came to her with the story, she, blissfully innocent, would believe that “the mystery lady in the red dress was no one but me.”

  When the great Benito Juárez, then president of Mexico, came one day to Colima, he was about to be shot by Filomeno the Blond, who decided to spare his life. Benito Juárez, in gratitude, signed a card for him that read: “You have reciprocity for your life.” So once when Filomeno, imprisoned in Zacatecas, was about to be executed, he showed the card promising “reciprocity for your life,” and was let go. Years later, like General Alvarez, he was also killed by a bullet to his heart, and the people of Colima thought up an epitaph for him: “Filomeno’s pax is a relief for everybody’s ass.”

  Miguel Alvarez García, General Manuel Alvarez’s grandson, was also a governor, and a great-grandchild, Griselda Alvarez Ponce de León, was a governor as well. Pomp and circumstance accompanied the Alvarez family for several generations. At least for the white, legitimate Alvarezes, those who lived in the front part of the house.

  Victoriano, the mulatto grandson of the general and his black servant Aleja, shared the fate of those who lived at the back of the house. He learned of the family history through the maids’ gossip. He was an invisible, mute witness to the economic success, the political struggles, and the military adventures of his grandfather, uncles, and his white siblings and cousins. Through the cracks he spied on their amorous conquests and their forced ones. Until he got tired of lusting after the women they possessed, got bored with their feats, that is, with admiring and envying their style of life. He wanted to live his own life, so he joined the army and ended up in Clipperton.

  Clipperton, 1915

  THE RAFT THAT WAS TAKING Arnaud and Cardona became unreal, like a faded memory, as it entered a zone of greenish fog. The women and children were watching it from the beach. They saw it moving away with difficulty toward the reef, bobbing up and down, fragile and tentative, in the treacherously contradictory ocean waves. The effort exerted by the two men rowing diligently made the raft advance, but the force of the waves kept pushing it back. It moved away, grew smaller, darker; it approached, became more visible, and then disappeared again. From the beach, the women kept it afloat with the power of their eyes, they saved it through their prayers to the Saint of Cabora, they brought it closer to shore with the power of their thoughts. When the image became more blurred, they waded in up to their knees to bring it nearer and to hold it back, to rescue it.

  “Do you think they’ll reach the ship?” Alicia asked Tirsa. Their soaked petticoats entangled their legs and they had to hold on to each other’s arms in order to withstand the waves and the wind. “Say yes, please say yes.”

  “I don’t see the ship anymore.”

  “But Rosalía sees it. And Ramón was sure—”

  “Maybe it’s behind the fog. Maybe they can get to it, Tirsa.”

  “There is nothing, and you know it. Shout with me.”

  They shouted together—they all shouted, the children shouted—but the noise of the churning sea swallowed their voices.

  The raft was getting close to the reefs and was being jostled about. It would ride up to the crest of a wave and then fall. The women lost sight of it, and then it appeared again, floating amid the greenish vapors or on top of another mountain of water. A big black wave pulled it back toward the beach.

  “They’re coming back! They heard us, and they’re coming back!”

  “Yes, they are returning.”

  The women were screaming until their voices became hoarse. Speaking at the same time, they cursed, they prayed, they argued. Another wave caught the raft and threw it against the rocks.

  Alicia covered her eyes with her hands.

  “Tell me if they went over the reef,” she pleaded.

  “I don’t see them. Yes, I do! There they are—”

  “Do you see them?”

  “Yes, over there.”

  “Thank heaven. . . . Are they all right?”

  “I think so. But look . . . look at that dark thing that is coming out of the water.”

  “A dark thing—”

  “It’s a manta ray. The ray is attacking them!”

  “Shut up, Rosalía. Those are rocks. Tirsa, do you see them?”

  “I only see shadows.”

  “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be—”

  “Stop praying, Alta, and take care of the children.”

  The seven children had forgotten all about the raft and were mindlessly splashing about in the water.

  “I am telling you it is a manta ray. It overturned the raft!”

  “Open your eyes, Alicia. Help me look.”

  “No, I see them. They sank! Can anybody see them?”

  “There they go, there they go, I see my papa!”

  “Children, hush!”

  “My daddy is struggling with a manta ray.”

  “Shut up! Don’t you understand? Altagracia, I’m telling you to get the children out of the water. Tirsa, do you see them?”

  “No, Alicia, I don’t see them.”

  “Altagracia, do you see them?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Rosalía, anybody! How come nobody sees anything?”


  “Oh, Jesus, the sea swallowed them.”

  “You shut up, too! Come, Tirsa, come with me.” Alicia waded deeper into the water. Ramoncito clung to her neck.

  “Ramoncito, you must go back to shore.”

  “No.”

  “Go away, you’re going to drown, and you’re drowning me. Somebody come and get this child!”

  Altagracia pulled the screaming Ramoncito away. The rest walked away also. Only Alicia and Tirsa remained, getting deeper into the water until they couldn’t touch bottom. So they floated for a while, swallowing water each time the waves went over their heads.

  “Tirsa, do you see them?”

  “No, I haven’t seen them for a while. I see shark fins.”

  “Sharks? The sharks got them!”

  “Wait. Let’s go to the beach to look for them, maybe they came back on the other side.”

  They got out of the water. The children were running, all wet, their teeth chattering with cold.

  “Alta, you stay with the children. Take off their clothes and put them out to dry. Everybody, help us search for Ramón and Cardona. Rosalía and Francisca, you go that way. Tirsa and I will go this way.”

  They spent the rest of the morning walking over the ground coral all around the shore. Sometimes one of them seemed to see something, and they both would go into the water, calling their men in loud voices, and then they would come out of the water and continue walking. By midafternoon their feet were bleeding, cut by the broken coral. Occasionally they met the other women.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Keep looking. Keep looking until you find them.”

  They met Altagracia and the kids. Ramoncito ran after his mother and clung to her legs.

  “Not now, child.”

  Ramoncito cried. He did not want to let go.

  “Alta, take this child away. Give them something to eat. They must be hungry.”

  “What do I give them?”

  “Whatever you can find.”