Isle of Passion

by Laura Restrepo

  “That boy has an eagle eye,” commented Perril, uselessly trying to see it.

  Not until fifteen minutes later was he able to see a gray shadow in the distance. As they got closer, the shadow darkened and took first the tall aspect of a ship’s sails, and later that of a castle. It was Clipperton, no doubt. It was the big rock on the southeast coast, according to description. Captain Perril felt uneasy. Neither he nor his men had entertained any desire to sail there. Before they left San Francisco, however, Admiral Fullam, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had informed them that Clipperton was to be included in their itinerary. They were in the middle of the world war and there were rumors that the Germans, taking advantage of the tense relationship between the Mexican and U.S. governments, had installed radio stations or submarine bases along the Pacific coast of Mexico. The gunboat Yorktown had to engage in a meticulous surveillance trip.

  It was a monotonous, routine job, and his crew was anxious to be in action, so he received the news reluctantly. Before the gunboat parted from the continent, they had determined their ports of call carefully. Admiral Fullam had placed the quadrant on top of the map and traced an appropriate itinerary from Honolulu to Panama. Clipperton was just underneath the black line.

  Captain Perril protested. “I am going to make a foolish request, Admiral. You know the men don’t like to get near that isle. I know there are superstitions, of course, but if possible, it would be better to avoid it.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain, it can’t be done. It is well within our area of operation.” Fullam was explicit, knowing well what Perril was referring to. Clipperton was one of those places sailors consider bad omens, in part because of the difficulties they present for navigation, in part due to superstition. In the case of Clipperton, there seemed to be a good basis for both, since the number of shipwrecks around it was strangely elevated.

  The ship’s itinerary had been, in fact, slow and boring, and as they had suspected, it had been only a rumor, they did not find even a trace of the Germans. Accustomed to matter-of-fact issues, Captain Perril felt uncomfortable about this wild-goose chase. To make things worse, now he also had to pass by Clipperton. After Perril read his navigation instructions and the unfavorable information about access to the atoll, he was convinced that he should not make any attempt except in broad daylight.

  Therefore, that Monday afternoon of 16 July, he reduced speed in order to reach the isle at dawn on Wednesday. On Tuesday, at 2000, he veered the gunboat slightly east so that, maintaining course during the night, their position in the morning would be five miles east of the isle. However, a night squall had altered his plans somewhat, and by 0600 Wednesday, Clipperton was still not in sight as expected. The isle had not yet appeared by seven, nor by eight, and Captain Perril, convinced that it had been left behind, decided with some relief not to reverse course. He was troubled to learn then, at 0950, that against all odds, Clipperton had suddenly emerged from the mist dead ahead.

  The encounter had been a matter of chance rather than willingness, or, perhaps, it had been due to the isle’s willpower rather than his own. In spite of his Anglo-Saxon phlegm and pragmatism, Captain Perril could not help but feel disturbed by the idea that this undesirable place had willed him to its shores. Notwithstanding, the Yorktown approached the coast without any difficulty. The ship circumnavigated the atoll while Perril watched through his spyglass without finding anything abnormal. On the contrary, it was sort of a deception, since everything he saw was small, barren, quiet, insignificant. Nothing that could suggest a black legend. The only signs of life seemed to be some people with handkerchiefs waving good-bye. Just the usual. A while later the people were still waving handkerchiefs, and it seemed to the captain there were perhaps women, and also children, running on the beach waving good-bye.

  They keep doing that, Perril thought. They must have nothing to do.

  He considered his mission accomplished, and was about to give orders to set sail, when something made him change his mind. Nothing specific, just an impulse, the stirring of a premonition. He ordered his second in command, Lieutenant Kerr, to get ready to disembark. Kerr looked at him in surprise. A risky landing would have to be made by boat because of the choppy seas, and there was no apparent justification for it. Perril noticed his bewilderment and tried to formulate an explanation.

  “I want to know whether the lighthouse I see over there is working,” he said without conviction. Lieutenant Kerr nodded, but his bewildered expression did not change.

  Taxco, Today

  I AM LOOKING FOR ALTAGRACIA Quiroz, the chambermaid at the Hotel San Agustín who left for Clipperton as nursemaid for the Arnauds’ children. I find out she died last year at a very old age, but I meet with her cousin, who was close to her and knew her well. Her name is Guillermina Yamada. She had a Japanese father and a Mexican mother, and lives in the town of Taxco. She is tall and slender, her fingers are long and aristocratic, and she has deep circles under her Asiatic eyes.

  I interview her on July 5, 1988, a day before the presidential elections. All of Mexico is papered with posters, and the faces of the candidates jump out from all the walls and around every corner. Aside from the election din, the place where she lives looks like a tourist postcard. It is a small house with balconies and bougainvillea, squeezed in with other houses on a narrow, uphill street: Number 9 on Benito Juárez, a few yards away from the Taxco zócalo.

  Guillermina’s manner is deliberate and aloof, and she apologizes for her failing memory. She explains that after her husband’s death she suffered a brain seizure that erased all the past from her mind. She never recovered and even forgets the present, she says, her daughters have to help her find her things, because she does not remember where she places them.

  At first, sometime after Altagracia returned from Clipperton, they had been like mother and daughter, because of their age difference. Altagracia was born in 1901 and Guillermina in 1918. But later, as time went on, they became friends, confidants.

  I inquire about Altagracia’s life after her return from Clipperton. “Tell me, Doña Guillermina, did your cousin ever get married?”

  “Yes, of course she did, with a man called—you are not going to believe this—”

  “Yes, I believe you. I have been told already. His name was Gustav Schultz, and he represented a foreign company dealing in guano at Clipperton.”

  “Exactly. Isn’t it unbelievable? The love story of those two is like a soap opera.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

  Guillermina remembers more than she believes; she is more lucid than she claims to be. Between one apology and another about the weakness of her mind, she tells me about her cousin, the woman who had been like a mother to her, and who later became her best friend, Señora Altagracia Quiroz Schultz.

  “Alta died a year ago, I accompanied her in her last days. I had a debt to repay to her, because she had accompanied me in my life. For many years we had talked and talked, but at the end she could not hold a conversation. She had lost her mind by the time she died, due to all the beatings she had to endure from that sick soldier. He damaged her for life. She had an inoperable tumor that gradually made her insane. In her last days she could not make any sense, but only at the end, when she was very old. Not before. Before, she only had memory lapses once in a while. During those times she got desperate when all her memory went, but afterward she recovered, and the rhythm of her life continued.

  ““Altagracia must have suffered a lot on the isle,” says her cousin and goddaughter, Doña Guillermina, “because that man tortured her mercilessly. He was what is called a sadist. She could never have children with her husband, the German fellow, and that was also the result of the damage done to her by that evil man who raped the women. He beat all the women on the head, grabbing them by the hair and dragging them on the ground. Alta had the most beautiful, longest hair that I have ever seen in my life. But you are not right when you say that all the women cut their hair in Cli
pperton because it interfered with their work, with doing the men’s jobs that life had forced them to do. It did not bother them, because they kept it in thick braids tied up on top of their heads. That was not the reason. They cut their hair so nobody would use it to drag them around, and knock them unconscious.”

  “Then they cut their hair to spare their heads.”

  “That’s right. That Victoriano Alvarez, Alta used to tell me, was so evil that he held the isle in a spell so that ships would not get close to it. They knew it was he who kept them isolated, and that as long as he was alive, that spell on Clipperton would not be broken. That was why, and also because he beat them and raped them, they wanted to kill him. Altagracia told me that when they could not stand it anymore, they had once prepared him some poison, mixed with marmalade, in order to do away with him. He realized it was a trick, and that day they were the ones almost done in. His fury turned him into a more cruel beast than he usually was. He grabbed them by the hair, one by one, and beat them all unconscious. It was then that they decided to cut their hair short.”

  “Did they attempt to poison him with marmalade?” I ask her. “Wasn’t it with soup?”

  “With marmalade.”

  “Where did they get the fruit and the sugar?”

  “I don’t know, but Alta said it was with marmalade. My cousin’s bad luck started when she met Mrs. Alicia Rovira Arnaud at a hotel in Mexico City. That lady already had three children and was looking for a nursemaid to take to the isle when she realized that her chambermaid, Alta, was an educated person who worked there only because of the situation in which the Mexican Revolution had left her family. Our family. Alta’s father was a schoolteacher and had taught her to write with good spelling and good penmanship. They lived in Yautepec, state of Morelos, which was the zone of the rebel Emiliano Zapata and of the peasants in arms. The Quiroz family was running away from the fracas when they were almost killed in a shooting. Alta was saved by a soldier who galloped by, pulled her up onto his horse, and got her out of there. She never knew to what side he belonged. The family disbanded after leaving their home, and all had to fend on their own. Alta had to earn her living as best she could in the capital. She accepted the Arnauds’ offer, and when the family went back to Clipperton, she left with them. I suppose she did because it was her best prospect. She was fourteen years old and making five pesos a month. The Arnauds offered her ten and promised her that she would be on the isle only for four months and could return with the next ship. They were able to provide the double salary, but not her return in four months. Not that.

  “Alicia and Altagracia were together in their predicament. One was the mistress and the other the servant, but fate treated them, I mean, mistreated them, equally. They were both forced to be Victoriano’s lovers, like all the other women in Clipperton. None was saved from that. He was the king and they were his slaves, and there were no privileges under this tyrant.

  “But the more you suffer, the faster you get to heaven, and that was what happened to Altagracia. Heaven on earth, because when she returned from the isle, she met the German fellow again, who had never stopped looking for her, and they married. She had the good luck then of having an adoring husband who had established himself in Mexico in order to be with her, and who was totally devoted to her. He took her with him to live in the Water House in Acapulco, and since he always treated her like a princess, the local people called her ‘the Princess of the Water House.’

  “So she never had to work again, Schultz put three servants and a gardener at her disposal. He bought her the best imported dresses and the most expensive shoes from incoming ships overflowing with merchandise. For her, mind you, who had been dressed in rags and had run barefoot for so long in Clipperton. Since she had been deprived of food, he gave her all the food she wished. It was usually German food, it’s true, like sausages and cabbage, which were the only things he liked, but she hid in the kitchen to prepare her Mexican mole or stuffed chiles, and shared them with the three servants and the gardener.

  “That German fellow, Gustav Schultz, became the most beloved foreigner in Acapulco, because he was the one who brought drinking water to the port city. He probably did this to compensate her for all the thirst she suffered, and the many mouthfuls of seawater she had to swallow when it did not rain.

  “I have always asked myself why Altita—that was how her husband called her—was able to inspire such love in a foreigner. Surely it was because of the way she was. There is no other explanation. She had a sweet but strong temperament, and he always liked to see her happy, in spite of all she had suffered. She was not pretty, we might say she was rather ugly. Her best feature was her precious hair. It was quite unusual. But in everything else she was quite ordinary. She was thickset, short, with peasant features, and I especially remember her fat fingers,” Guillermina tells me, looking wistfully at hers, so long and graceful, and she smiles when I tell her that it should have been the other way around, that she should have been the one named Altagracia, since she was so graceful, and her cousin, Guillermina.

  “Alta told me many times about her life in Clipperton, without hate, without regrets. She did not mind her sad past anymore because her present was so happy. She would talk about it because she liked to reminisce. She lived to an old age and was a bit crazy, but she was happy. Her life was like a fairy tale, with a lot of suffering, but a happy marriage afterward. I cannot tell you any more, because I had a brain seizure that made me lose my memory,” Guillermina Yamada tells me once more, wringing her beautiful hands.

  Clipperton, 1916

  TAKING HER LAST CHANCE against death, Alicia climbed to the lighthouse to make signals to the approaching vessel. She heard voices coming from below, from the beach. The rest of the women had already seen the ship and were frantically shouting for help. If we all see it, she thought, then it must be real. While she was waving the sheet, the idea of a rescue became a real possibility. Her father, Orizaba, a school for the children, and so many ghosts that had become parts of an abandoned dream were suddenly taking substantial form again. Nobody could keep that ship from reaching the shore. The only thing to do was to pray for time to pass quickly, to precipitate the end without her having to go through the preliminaries: the wait that burned her throat, the smarting anxiety that made her eyes hurt. This time nobody could prevent it, it was enough to extend her arm to reach salvation. Nobody would stand in the way. Nobody.

  Except Victoriano Alvarez. Like a vulture flying low and hitting her with its wing, the thought of Victoriano threatening to kill all of them before they could be rescued—so they couldn’t denounce him—jolted Alicia like a bolt.

  She let herself go downhill, running without looking where she placed her feet, without stopping, and still struggling to keep her body wrapped in the sheet, getting up quickly every time she stumbled, without feeling the sharp rocks cutting her ankles, her legs, her knees. After reaching her three children, she untied Angel from the sling on her back, and laying him down on a safe spot, told her son Ramón:

  “Now you stay here and keep an eye on the baby and on your sisters. We might be rescued, but we’ll have to do things very carefully. Swear to me, Ramoncito, that none of you are going to move away from here until I come back.”

  She kept on going down without waiting for the child’s reply. I always climb this rocky cliff full of reasons to stop living, and I go down again full of reasons to keep on living, was what came to her mind as she descended, half running, half sliding. She saw Tirsa trying to light a bonfire on the beach, surely in order to make signals, and she called her, catching her voice, not daring to shout. Victoriano’s lair was on the other side of the rock, and he should be there if he was still sleeping. She was afraid the wind would carry their voices and wake him up.

  “Tirsa,” she said when she got close to her, “we must kill Victoriano. Right now, before he kills us.”

  “He wouldn’t dare, the boat is too close.”

  “Yes he would, because
he’s insane. He will shoot us, as he promised, and then he will hide, or he will leave, he alone. Let’s go, we have no time to waste.”

  “How do we kill him?

  “I buried Ramón’s sword next to the house—”

  “No, we can’t use that. It has to be something we can hide so he doesn’t see it. We better hit him on the head with a rock.”

  They chose a medium-sized rock, sharp-edged, with a pointed end. They got close to the lighthouse lair and called Victoriano. Tirsa hid the rock behind her, and Alicia walked in Tirsa’s shadow. They could feel the irregular pounding of their blood, and everything seemed unreal, like someone else’s nightmare. Nobody answered, and they called again. Altagracia came out and said the man was not there. She had not seen the ship, nor heard the shouts. She was not aware of anything.

  “Do you think Victoriano has found out?” asked Alicia.

  “No, surely he hasn’t either. A while ago he took his harpoons and walked north to go fishing.”

  “Will you help us, Alta? We’re going to kill him.”

  “How?”

  “Whatever way we can.”

  “But look at your legs, Señora Alicia, you’re bleeding. You’d better wash first, and calm down. If he sees you like that, so nervous, he’s going to suspect your intentions.”

  “That’s right,” Tirsa said, “to kill him, we have to trick him. We have to think this out better.”

  “We have no time to think anything. We have to go and hit him, and that’s it.” Alicia did not want to say more and started walking. “If you’re not coming, I’ll go alone.”