Isle of Passion

Clipperton, 1914

THE OCEAN SURROUNDING CLIPPERTON is dense and dark, muddled and entangled with an overload of plankton and other substances. Deep underwater currents determine its movements. When Ramón and Alicia managed to overcome all the red tape and returned from Mexico during the first months of 1914, they experienced such joy to be on their isle again that they devoted their time to finding unexplored nooks. They discovered then that bordering the barrier reef around the isle and under the opaque and seemingly hostile surface of the water, there was a diverse and luminous universe. It was impossible to explore it on the windward side: the enormous waves exploding against the reefs would overpower any human being who dared try. But it was possible on the leeward side, where the sea withdrew, its will already broken after crashing against the rocky shoreline of the isle.

Making use of the old diver’s suit, Ramón and Alicia spied on the secrets of those monumental underwater palisades formed by billions of minute coral polyps piled on top of one another, making the reef come alive, breathe, move, and have a will of its own. They were always amazed at the whimsical, baroque structures that expanded in the shape of tree branches, mushrooms, umbrellas, cauliflowers, deer or moose antlers, deer horns, spines, lace, ruffles, and fringes.

On land, out of the water, the sun incinerated and bleached everything it touched. All except the crabs, with their bright red shells. Everything else was drab and brownish: the rocks, the sand, the sea, the seagulls. It was all a fading, monotonous body, in a camouflage of gray-brown tones with veins in paler shades. Like in an overexposed photo, the elements and the animals fused together, and it was impossible to distinguish one from the other, except for their silhouettes.

Underwater, in contrast, it was a bright, multicolored universe. Against the dark bottom, one could see dots of dazzling light and explosions in phosphorescent violet, methylene blue, neon shades of green, translucent mauve tones, and iridescent golds. The rigid and desiccated textures found out of the water would become softened and spongy, organic, sticky. Through the cracks and rocky galleries, hallucinatory guests would peek out: bunches of little pink fingers, swollen livers sporting electrified manes, transparent tubers with luminous eyes, creatures with flexible arms that delicately reached for their food and took it to their mouths.

Alicia and Ramón let themselves go with the timeless rhythm of the underwater world. Porfirio Díaz, Francisco Madero, Doña Carlota, even their own beings and all their history and everyday lives disappeared like fleeting ghosts when faced with the eternal reality of the squids’ slow-motion dances of love and death; with the rocklike creatures that, waking up apparently hungry, surprised their victims, sardines as well as occupants of sunken galleons; or with the sleepy lumbering of the sea bass, that sweet giant of the deep.

This placid existence of the Arnauds would have continued slipping by, rocked only by the ebb tide, were it not for the dawn of February 28, when they were awakened by a strange, humid, asphyxiating heat, like a damp towel covering one’s nose and mouth.

By five A.M., Ramón kicked off the sheet and began tossing about restlessly in bed.

“The problem with the ocean is that it’s too noisy. All the time, day and night, it’s making noise. I’ve already forgotten what silence is. I miss the silence,” he whispered in the hush of night. He turned this way and that, rearranging his pillow and trying to go back to sleep, without success. “I must have slept on the wrong side of the bed and woken up angry. Even the sound of the waves, always so pleasant, is driving me wild today.”

“You’re not the one who is angry, it’s the ocean. It’s making more noise than ever,” Alicia said, and got up to take a look out the window. In the sky, a sickly dawn was rising without any conviction. Under the scant light, the ocean itself was dead calm for miles. The motionless sea appeared gray, thick, and wrinkled, like the skin of an elephant.

“The strangest thing is how quiet it looks,” commented Alicia in astonishment. “It roars like a wild beast, but it’s still, as if it were dead.”

For a long time they had gotten into the habit of making love at sunrise, almost without consciously wanting to, letting themselves be carried by the energies that awaken independently after a night of rest. That morning they tried, but failed. Something in the air made their bodies feel like rag dolls and paralyzed every impulse before it was born.

“I can’t,” said Ramón, sitting on the bed in order to fill his lungs. “I need air.”

“I can’t either,” she said. “I need air, too.”

The sticky weather made their clothes damp with perspiration even before they finished getting dressed. Ramón went into the hall to look at the barometer. He found it showed an extremely low reading and thought it was out of order. He looked at the time. It was already six twenty in the morning, but the amount of sunlight had not changed since five o’clock, as if the heavy air would not allow the light to filter through.

“What the hell is going on?” he said out loud, but he could not hear his own words because of the loud noise coming from the ocean. Walking on the beach toward the soldiers’ barracks, he met Lieutenant Cardona, who was also looking for him.

“That gringo Schultz thinks that a hurricane is coming,” Cardona announced. “He says we have to get ready, because it’s a strong one.”

“He is not a gringo. He is German.”

“About the same, isn’t it?”

“Anyway, what does this German fellow know about hurricanes?” growled Arnaud in disgust, just when a tenuous line, ruffled and nebulous, appeared on the horizon, scarcely visible above the water. Neither Captain Arnaud nor Lieutenant Cardona could actually see it.

Until noon they battled the weakness and heaviness that had come over them, in order to perform their usual chores. Wherever they went, they saw people lying down, children in silence, women inactive and distracted, soldiers sluggish and ill-tempered. Even the domestic animals were sprawled about carelessly, as if they had plopped down just anywhere.

Arnaud looked around and asked Cardona, “And what about the crabs? And the boobies? They are always all over us, and today I haven’t seen even one since dawn.”

“Heaven knows where they are,” the lieutenant answered.

It was already noon, and yet, no daylight. A timid, unnatural light was filtering through, but it was not enough to dispel the darkness. Meanwhile, the sun seemed to have stopped in its position in the sky, swallowing timeless minutes.

Arnaud went to the supply store and set aside several bags of foodstuffs. In a flat, business-as-usual tone, he gave instructions to Cardona.

“Gather all the women and children at the vegetable patch, and have them wait there until we see what is going on. Ask the men to do a head count and make sure nobody is missing. Where do you think the people could be best protected? In the guano shed next to the dock?”

“That’s correct, sir,” Cardona answered in his most energetic military tone. “That is the sturdiest structure on the isle.”

“Besides, it’s on a higher ground and solidly built on pylons, so it will not be dragged away by floodwaters. Have someone take these food supplies there and a few barrels of drinking water. And make sure domestic animals are also sheltered.”

“Two by two, just like Noah’s ark,” offered the lieutenant with a childish smile, seeming both excited and amused by the prospect of a great commotion.

While Cardona and the soldiers corralled the pigs, chickens, and dogs in an improvised pen at one corner of the shed, Arnaud went to the lighthouse to speak to the soldier in charge, Victoriano Alvarez.

“Turn on the beam, Victoriano,” he ordered, “and keep it on at all costs. If things get rough, tie yourself to the rock, or do whatever you can, but don’t let the light go out.”

Arnaud joined Cardona and the other men in time to see how a sudden gust of wind whipped against the palm trees, folding their trunks almost at right angles and abruptly turning the fronds upside down as if it were pulling a bunch of reluctant young ladies by the hair.

“Look at that! It’s the hurricane!” shouted Cardona, pointing toward it. “Here it comes already!”

“Well, let it come,” said Arnaud. “Let it blow if it must but once and for all, because this dead calm is driving us nuts.”

The unexpected gust of wind vanished and the palm trees recovered their composure, but the dark line that up to a minute before had seemed to rest on the horizon quickly covered in a few instants half the distance that separated it from Clipperton, showing its flying halo of leaves and other suspended objects being buffeted by the wind.

“It’s time for the women and the children to get into the shed,” shouted Arnaud. Don’t let them leave until the storm is over.”

At the mere mention of the word, as if it had been an invocation, the storm fiercely let loose all its force. As the jets of water hit them, the reality of the situation dawned, and the events, restrained up to then, came upon them in such rapid succession and with such violence that in spite of having been warned, they were taken by surprise.

Standing at the entrance of the guano shed — well constructed by Schultz during the company’s golden age — Ramón helped the women in. With children hanging from their skirts, they came carrying baskets overflowing with serapes, pieces of cloth, scapularies, pictures of saints, kitchen pots, metates to grind corn: every imaginable thing that deserved to be saved from the deluge.

Ramón saw his wife and children coming in the middle of the group. As Ramoncito ran to him, eyes round identical to his, and eyelashes dripping water, he picked him up and tightly hugged his fragile frame, like a little bird’s.

“Daddy,” the child shouted in his ear, “the winged horses went mad and started to gallop in the skies.”

“Who told you that?”

“Doña Juana told me, and it’s true.”

Alicia’s hair was loose and wet, and it stuck to her face and body. She was carrying baby Olga on one arm, and with the other she was pulling a large trunk, helped by Altagracia Quiroz, who pushed it from behind.

Ramón quickly put his child down and lifted the trunk.

“You are always doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment,” he told Alicia, but she did not understand at all.

“What are you saying?”

“What the heck do you have there?”

“My wedding dress, my best clothes, and my jewelry,” Alicia shouted back.

“Why do you need them now?”

“The last thing I need is to lose these things to the wind,” she said, now without straining her voice, more to herself than to Ramón.

He took the trunk inside and ran out again to help a woman whom another gust of wind had thrown into one of the rivers of rain running everywhere on the isle. He did not know how or where he caught her, a round, wet, soft, and difficult mass who held desperately to his legs, causing him to fall also. Finally he was able to drag her through the mud and bring her in. Through the existing confusion, Arnaud then looked at the back of the shed and in the semidarkness managed to see Alicia’s silhouette, placing the baby on a wheelbarrow she had found in the shed.

Looking at her, he felt a tight lump in his throat. He had to refrain from going to help her, to dry her hair with a towel, to tell her, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right,” and to seek the shelter of her embrace, quietly hiding from the storm and from the unmanageable situation that had fallen on his shoulders.

What I have to do is go for my men, he thought as if waking up, and waved Alicia a good-bye that she didn’t see.

He left the shed to fulfill his duty, clinging to the walls of neighboring houses and without knowing exactly in which direction to go. He was trying body and soul not to be dragged by the elements when an airborne sharp object hit him on the forehead and knocked him backward. He lay on the ground, his eyes blinded and his mind taken over by a burning pain that reached to every corner of his brain. After he had been lying there a while, stunned, the first thought that came to his mind was about Gustav Schultz.

Where could that German fellow be now? he wondered. Maybe he could tell me how long we can expect this to last.

He tried to get up, but the pain from his wound did not let him. Feeling the warm flow of blood collecting over his right eye, then dripping lazily to the ground, he managed to drag himself up against a wall for some protection, and he lay there, looking at how the world was being transformed while darkness kept closing in around him.

He saw an intermittent point of light in the dark sky and knew that the soldier in the lighthouse was doing his duty. Clouds in the sky were dissolving as they flitted by in vertiginous succession. Next to him a floor beam, still nailed down, vibrated incessantly, resisting the windstorm’s attempt to pull it out. He saw zinc planks, chairs, and wooden beams go by, surely on their way to crash down somewhere in the distance. Slowly turning his stunned head toward the sea, he saw instead mountains of solid water rushing toward the isle and threatening to engulf it. He noticed that the heat that had tormented him in the morning had dissipated and that now freezing gusts of wind against his soaked clothes were making him shiver.

I have to move away from here, he thought. Here I am going to drown, or freeze. I am going to die, I must do something. We’re not going to get out alive from this one. Where is everybody? Where is that German fellow so I can ask him what to do?

He decided to give his wounded head a few more minutes of rest. It was then that he saw a large, imprecise object rolling toward him and making a loud, harsh noise.

“It’s the Pianola,” Ramón said to himself. “My whole house must have flown out the window.”

Revived by his premonition, he was able to stand. The first thing he did was to move closer to the shed where the women and children were, and he was relieved to see it resisting the pounding of the hurricane. The effort of getting up made him nauseous but, in spite of that, he tried to walk toward his home with the intention of securing doors and windows.

He was digging his fingers into the rocks, into the palm tree trunks, into whatever was closest by, in order to advance. His body felt heavy like a sack of stones, the wound on his temple pulsated like a chronometer, and the wind, which had torn his shirt, ended up taking away whatever was left of it. It seemed to cost him an eternity to advance every inch.

He managed to reach a point where he could have a glimpse of his house, and in that moment he realized the true dimensions of the catastrophe. He quickly abandoned his idea of trying to secure doors and windows. He even felt guilty for having such a naive intent when he realized that the hurricane winds were getting into his house through the gaping hole left by the roof, now completely gone.

All sorts of objects were flying out, as if a gaggle of madmen inside the house were throwing them up in the air. Ramón watched with resignation how his own dearest belongings and the ones that had accompanied them all these years were disappearing one by one. He allowed himself to feel bitter when he saw his reports and his books doing cabrioles in midair like pinwheels.

There is nothing to be done here, he thought. Let me find the rest of the people.

He looked in every direction without knowing where to head. There was only disaster around him, and then he saw, to the south, the beam of the lighthouse.

They must be there, he thought. Perhaps they took refuge in the cave.

He walked on, guided by the light, calling at the top of his voice, but nobody could hear him. The gusts threw sand in his eyes, and in the whirlwinds he was helplessly being pulled about like a puppet. The wound on his head hurt, his body was all bruised, and worst of all, he was alone, isolated by force from everybody. Ramón Arnaud felt personally aggravated and deeply humiliated.

Suddenly, when he was about to give up, he rebelled against so much humiliation. A wave of courage made his blood boil, and he regained control over his own body. He stood up, defiantly facing the wind, and in anger took off his belt and began whipping the air as if possessed. He brandished his belt right and left like a maniac while shouting at the hurricane at the top of his lungs. “Damn you, bastard, what do you have against me? Hey! What is it you want? Do you want me to finish you off with my whip? You’ve got five minutes, you shitty son of a bitch, I give you five minutes to get out of here!”

Giant angry waves, breaking into foam at their crests, were hitting Clipperton, running over it and coming out on the other shore undisturbed by this insignificant obstacle in their run across the ocean.

Ramón Arnaud kept shouting while holding on to his pants with one hand and whipping the air with the other, when one of those mountains of water reached him, lifted him, and hurled him a few yards away against one side of the big southern rock. Then it withdrew, leaving him stranded on one of the rocky recesses.

Arnaud coughed and vomited some of the water he had swallowed. When he was able to breathe again, he attempted to climb to a higher position, anticipating the next wave that would smash him against the rock. He had been lucky this time and miraculously made a soft landing, but in the next charge of the tide he could become imbedded there like the thousands of fossils that had found their eternal resting place.

In the meantime, in the shed next to the dock, the women and children, together with the animals, had spent several hours more or less protected from the elements gone beserk. At the beginning they had earnestly tried to cover, as best they could, all the cracks and holes where water and wind were coming in. Then they gathered in the center of the shed, huddling against one another in a tighter and tighter circle. They had been silent for a long while, stunned by the unbearable noise of the roof, which vibrated and screeched, threatening to fly off any minute, and by the wailing of the children, who competed all at once to see who could cry the loudest.

Some people had started to pray the litanies of the Holy Cross, and the rest slowly followed.

“If when I’m dying, / The devil wants to tempt me, / You will protect me, / Because at the feast of Santa Cruz, / A thousand times I repeated: / Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, repeated without pause or respite a hundred times; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, in an endless, dull murmur that through repetition became susje, susje, susje, susje, susje. Someone did the counting and when it reached a hundred times, interrupted with the prayer, “If when I’m dying, / The devil wants to tempt me,” and the heavy torrent of voices repeated Jesus another hundred times, sounding like broken dishes rolling down, or rain falling, made almost inaudible by the roar of the storm.

It was not the feast of Santa Cruz that day — for a long time, dates had lost their significance for anybody in Clipperton — but there was every indication that the time of dying had come. “Because at the feast of Santa Cruz, / A thousand times I repeated: / Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” echoed Alicia, but she was actually thinking of Ramón, and his absence made her feel anxious. They had lived together for a long time in close quarters on the isle, where, whether they wished it or not, they could seldom be more than five hundred yards apart from each other. Now that the danger of the situation was keeping them separated, Alicia let herself be overcome by an anxiety not experienced since her adolescence in Orizaba, when for months she had waited for her fiancé’s return in the patio of her family home, besieged by doubts about ever seeing him again. Holding on her lap baby Olga, who was badly in need of a diaper change and kept crying with surprising strength for her age, Alicia whispered again, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” But instead, she was thinking, Ramón, Ramón, Ramón.

On the other side of the island, under a sinister sky, Ramón was clinging to the rocks like a housefly. He was nearing physical exhaustion and mental delirium, when he seemed to hear a voice other than his own. A lament, perhaps, or a scream. Weak and faltering, it came from the darkness below. He thought of going down to it, but he told himself that he would be then at the merciless whim of the rising tide. Anyway, he felt the need to respond. It was dangerous, and he had better warm up his rigid muscles before attempting it. After stretching his arms and legs, which barely responded, he managed to go down a couple of yards. He couldn’t see anybody, but there was more urgency in the voice, which sometimes sounded human and at others it didn’t.

Could it be someone calling for help? he wondered. Or is it only the wind whistling and trying to deceive me? Or maybe it’s a mermaid. A wretched mermaid who wants me to die.

As if to settle the matter, the words were now pretty audible.

“It’s me, Ramón. Help me.”

It was the voice of Lieutenant Cardona.

“Is it you, Cardona?”

“It’s me, Ramón, here, on your right.”

“Are you there, Cardona?”

“Here, in the rubble.”

“Can you see me?”

“Yes, I do see you, I’m on your right, Ramón.”

“Where?”

“Under this beam.”

“I don’t see you, but I hear you fine.”

“Because the wind has stopped.”

Ramón then realized it was true, that the wind had unexpectedly stopped. A second before, it was all fury and chaos, and momentarily it all had become still, mysteriously quiet. The sea had gone back, ebbing quicky from the shore as if sucked into an enormous siphon. The wind was not calm, it seemed absent, leaving in its place a warm, thick substance that did not properly reach his lungs.

There was something phony and frightening in the abrupt stillness.

Ramón reached a deep recess at the base of the big rock perpendicular to the beach. Shaped like a cave, it had gathered whatever the hurricane had pulled out from various places. Blindly, feeling with his hands, Ramón began to dig, while listening to the lieutenant’s heavy breathing, which came from underneath all the debris.

“Be careful,” Cardona said, “my leg is trapped under something really heavy.”

Ramón could distinguish the dark bulk of the lieutenant’s head and trunk in the back, in a space bubble amid the debris. He could make out his left leg twisted into an impossible position and caught under a heavy beam with a pile of other things, unidentifiable in the dark, on top of it.

“You must have that leg completely smashed,” said Ramón.

“Help me to get all this off me.”

Ramón pulled with all his might, but the beam did not budge at all.

“I don’t understand how you got trapped in here,” he said.

“I don’t either. But get me out of here, and I’ll try to explain.”

“Wait. Maybe if I can lean against something.”

Ramón tried again, pivoting his own back against the big rock, to no avail. For a long while he jostled with the debris, which resulted only in increasing the pressure of the beam on Cardona’s leg, almost driving him to the point of losing consciousness several times.

“Stop! Stop, Ramón, don’t do this anymore, you’re killing me. Look in my pouch for cigarettes, let’s have a smoke before going on.”

Ramón reached for the pouch and found them.

“This is unbelievable,” he said, “they are dry!”

“Amazing.”

There were matches, too, and Captain Arnaud lit one. The wind had calmed down so much that the little flame held steady without his needing to shelter it. When he drew the light closer to Cardona, he saw his face at last but could not recognize it. The expression of pain and helplessness had turned him into another man, like an older brother or a pitiful and older version of himself.

“Gee, my friend, you look pale,” Arnaud told him.

“This might be the last cigarette we smoke together,” whispered Cardona while he felt the smoke reaching in to his soul.

“No, there are three more, and luckily they are dry, too,” Ramón answered.

“What I mean is that this is the eye of the storm. Don’t you see? In a short while the wind will blow and the ruckus will start again. This cave will fill up with water, and you’re going to be outside, and me inside.”

“No, Secundino, never. Either we both live or we both die.”

Arnaud tried again in the darkness, now more desperately than before. After a while he managed to remove many smaller pieces of rubble, but the beam was still stuck in the rocks, pinning Cardona’s leg, and he moaned once in a while, more weakly each time.

Then the rumble began again. At first a faint dissonance like an irregular heartbeat, and then like obsessive but distant war drums. Pleasant gusts of wind began cooling their sweat-drenched foreheads.

“That’s it,” said Cardona, “here it comes again.”

“We still have a little time, and this beam is starting to move, you’ll see.”

“Not at all. We’d better have another smoke. That will give you time to recover.”

Ramón acquiesced because he had reached not only the point of exhaustion but also the conclusion that he could never get that beam to move.

“Did I ever tell you,” Cardona asked, “that in San Cristóbal de las Casas the air is clean and light, and it always smells like freshly chopped wood?”

“Yes, you have told me many times.”

“It’s true. Now go, Ramón. There’s nothing else to be done here. Not a thing.”

“No, my friend, I’m not leaving. Keep telling me about the air in San Cristóbal while I take care of business here. Get ready for more pain, because I’m going to kick this beam to hell and you are going to see all the stars in the Milky Way.”

Arnaud stretched his body over the lieutenant’s, filling in the only free space left in that recess of the big rock. He pulled his legs up, then pushed against the beam with all the strength left in his battered body.

Cardona howled in pain, and Ramón stopped.

“No more,” begged the lieutenant, “what you’re kicking to hell is my leg, and the beam is not moving. If I’m going to die, let me die in peace, and not like a martyred saint.”

“Bear with me, as I told you. I’m going to get you out of here, leg or no leg.”

“Yeah,” whispered Cardona, scarcely audible, “like a lizard dropping its tail to survive.”

“You certainly have a knack for animal comparisons.”

Ramón repeated his maneuver, and the effort was already making him dizzy when the first wave crashed into the cave, covering both of them, blocking their noses and lungs, almost bursting their hearts and ears, and leaving them flooded, almost drowned, for what seemed an eternity.

What a pity, we’re going to die, Ramón thought.

But they did not die. The big wave receded with the same fierceness with which it had come in, yanking their bodies outward and carrying the rubble with it. And then it happened: it was only a fraction of an inch, but Secundino Angel Cardona sensed that the centrifugal force of the water was moving the beam, releasing some of the pressure.

“Now is the time!” he shouted, spitting salt spray, and with a merciless jolt, he liberated his leg and dragged himself to the opening of the cave.

Ramón Arnaud followed him.

Mexico City, Today

TIRSA RENDÓN’S PHOTO was taken after all the events in Clipperton had ended; in it one can see clearly the ravages caused by the tragedy.

The focus is on the woman in the midst of a large group of people, and only her face can be seen. Her hair, not very professionally trimmed, is short and very straight, with a fringe in front that becomes rounded and longer on the sides, just covering her ears. This hairdo, plus the fact that her skin, naturally dark, has been tanned by the sun, gives her features, reminiscent of those of the Amazonian peoples, a slightly masculine air. This does not mean she is an ugly woman. Hers is an attractive face, handsome though not overly friendly, a face that stands out in a crowd.

It is her eyes that command attention. The high contrast between the whites of her eyes and her dark irises, the maturity of her gaze, the arrogance of the lifted right eyebrow. In this photo Tirsa presents herself as tough and primitive but not naive. She is not taken by surprise either by the camera or by life, not even when death menaces dangerously near. Though surrounded by others, she appears alone like an Amazon jungle native who has survived massacres and ravages, solitary, defiant, tough; a native who has seen it all, knows it all, who has managed to outwit all enemies through shrewdness, and who has returned from beyond life and death.

In the various existing documents about the Clipperton tragedy — those coming from María Teresa Arnaud Guzmán, General Francisco Urquizo, and Captain H. P. Perril — there are specific mentions of Tirsa. She is recognized as Mrs. Cardona, that is, Lieutenant Secundino Angel Cardona’s wife.

In the lieutenant’s military dossier is a letter signed by him in which he refers to his wife. He is asking that his weekly pay be reduced by fifteen pesos, which are to be given to her in the capital city. However, the name of his wife here is not, as expected, Tirsa Rendón. It is María Noriega. Either Tirsa Rendón was a name adopted by María Noriega, or Tirsa Rendón was not really Secundino Cardona’s lawful wife.

This second possibility proved to be true according to a group of documents at the end of the lieutenant’s dossier. Among them is a letter dated some years later (well after Cardona’s death), in which “María Noriega, Cardona’s widow,” a nurse at Puerto Central in Socorros and mother of two children, claims from the president of Mexico her widow’s pension. The confusion about the identity of the two women is evident in the answer the widow receives: “Please ask Mrs. María Noriega to send a copy of her marriage certificate to the deceased Captain Secundino Angel Cardona, due to the fact that in the investigation carried out by this ministry in reference to his last post on Clipperton Island, Teresa Rendón appears as that officer’s wife and gives testimony to the events that occurred there.”

María Noriega must have sent the requested marriage certificate, since the pension was granted to her, which corroborates the legitimacy of the relationship. This also proves that the woman who lived with Secundino Cardona until the end of his days was not his wife, but the above-mentioned “Teresa Rendón,” a variant of the name Tirsa Rendón.

In the end, everything is clear. Secundino Angel Cardona married a nurse, María Noriega, and they had two children. The ordeals of military life induced him to abandon her, and at some point in his many adventures he got together with Tirsa, who followed him from then on, to Clipperton. So Tirsa Rendón must have been, like the other Clipperton soldiers’ women, a camp follower.

Clipperton, 1914

UNDER THE PLANKS of the guano storehouse the roar of the storm was softer and more bearable, while outside, the isle was being pommeled by the tired, last battering. Men, women, and children were waiting, wide awake, for the coming dawn to clear the skies and finally quiet down the furies of wind and ocean.

Almost inaudible, a sort of piercing sound was resounding in their stunned eardrums. It was sharp and feminine, as if coming from a soprano, a ship siren, or a mermaid. A high C floating intermittently into the rarified air of the storehouse, sneaking into the intervals of silence when the roof planks stopped clattering. It was an urgent call, but so unexpected and unreal that the Clipperton survivors perceived it without hearing it, and nobody thought of asking where it came from. It was simply another incomprehensible and unmanageable phenomenon that the hurricane had brought along.

In a corner, Lieutenant Cardona lay on a straw mattress, a thick blanket over him. A bittersweet smile twisted his lips, allowing his white, Chamula Indian teeth to show. The excruciating pain in his disjointed, splintered leg still produced a dull tingling under the effects of the morphine injections Captain Arnaud had given him. Kneeling by his side, Tirsa Rendón, his common-law wife, tried to wring dry the cloths drenched with his perspiration, since all the liquid element in his body seemed to be flowing out freely from his forehead, his underarms, his back. As if the man wanted to die of dehydration.

In the stupor of his weakness and his narcosis, lying at the borderline between this life and the other, Cardona also heard the surreal ringing and dreamed that women with friendly breasts and angelic voices relieved his suffering by singing lullabies in his ear.

A few hours before, when the hurricane still thundered in all its fury, both captain and lieutenant had made their ghostly appearance at the storehouse. They came after their terrifying night, nearly naked and exhausted, like Moses rescued from the waters, numb with horror. If they managed to move along the isle, upsetting the devastating designs of nature, it was by mustering hidden reserves of energy and postponing death, step by step, with the last lifesaving iota of adrenaline.

Between them, they had dragged Cardona’s torn leg as if it were a third person, a dying man, heavy and swollen, whom they were trying to rescue from the storm. When they reached the refuge, Arnaud attempted to rearrange that mess of bone and blood, starting with the instruments in his first-aid kit and, when these proved insufficient, resorting to the work tools in the storehouse.

While Cardona howled and hallucinated about mermaids, Arnaud struggled with pincers and pulleys to reset his femur into the hip socket, to straighten his knee, which looked downward, to give some human form to this organic matter, so torn and disjointed.

He would not have accomplished much were it not for Tirsa Rendón’s incredible level-headedness and almost virile stamina. Covered with blood like a butcher or a priestess, she helped consistently, without fainting or being repelled, helping him to unravel tendons, pull bones, and darn skin with needle and thread, like embroidering doilies with cross-stitch.

When Arnaud had reached his outer limits of alertness and of his modest resources as a surgeon, he made splints and bandages, and not until then did he embrace Alicia, kiss his children, take off whatever was left of his soaked clothes, and cover himself with the heavy tablecloth with bobbin lace from Bruges that his wife had saved in her trunk. Wrapped in white cloth, like a tragic hero, he did a roll call to make a count of those present: eleven men, ten women, and nine children. Miraculously, the Mexicans were all there, except Victoriano Alvarez, posted at the lighthouse. Some of the men had wounds and contusions, but with the exception of Cardona’s leg wound, none was serious.

The only foreigner who had not left the isle, Gustav Schultz, was absent. Very early in the morning of the day before, Lieutenant Cardona had seen him observing the sky. He pointed his index finger up and predicted, “Hurricane.”

The lieutenant now recalled that last impression of his voluminous figure silhouetted against the dim predawn light. He knew better than anybody.

“Maybe he’s dead,” someone said.

But Ramón Arnaud was convinced that wasn’t so, and his face turned red with rage to think that instead of helping the community or contributing to its safety, Schultz had taken shelter on his own with his woman, inside the solid walls of his home. Arnaud imagined him to be at that moment dry, warm, and comfortably asleep in his bed, and felt something resembling hate.

The Arnaud family gathered in a tight group. Interrupted by the roars of the dying hurricane, the creaking of the roof, the cries of the children, and the nervous noise of the frightened animals, Ramón and Alicia almost didn’t let each other finish a sentence, eagerly recounting all the events of the last hours, threading like telegraphic messages the fragments of the two stories into a single intermittent one. Every three words, Ramoncito, who wanted to know everything to the last detail, would interrupt to ask “What happened?” “How did you hurt yourself, Dad?” “Where did you fall down?” “Who was it?” “How was it?” “Why was it?”

“Someone is knocking at the door,” a voice announced.

The storehouse door was opened, and a lot of water came in together with Daría Pinzón and her daughter, Jesusa Lacursa.

“Where is Schultz?” Arnaud asked them, no longer so sure about the answer.

“He’s gone mad,” Daría Pinzón answered.

“I’m not asking how he is, but where.”

“He is around, mad as a hatter. While his house flew away, he spent the whole night outside, trying to salvage the train and all the machinery, and all those useless contraptions that the company abandoned. And he, also, he also was abandoned on this isle, but he doesn’t care. And as for me, the wind might as well blow me away, he doesn’t care about that either. He only cares for the interests of the company, as if they were his children,” Daria said on the verge of a nervous breakdown, without being able to stop. “He has gone nuts, Captain, believe me, that gringo has gone crazy. He was brought to Clipperton to ship the guano, and he wants to ship guano even though there is no guano, no Clipperton, no company—”

“Calm down, Daría,” Arnaud said softly. “Go and get some hot coffee and find a spot here for you and your daughter.”

The women were throwing dough balls into the small fires they had made. Accompanied by a well-tuned guitar, someone was singing a strange corrido that told the story of a cockroach that couldn’t walk. Several men were playing monte over a gray military serape, with total absorption, oblivious to everything. Every once in a while they shouted for everyone to hear, announcing the cards they had uncovered.

“Two, for your rheumatism and your flu.”

“Four-ce off the covers to sleep with your lovers.”

“Six days of battle, and they stole my cattle.”

“Three things nice: chocolate and sugar ’n’ spice.”

In the meantime, the sharp whistle kept on unwittingly penetrating through every crack in the roof, subtle and distant but implacable, like a remote Judgment Day trumpet.

The tail of the hurricane dissipated when the sun came up, and people slowly left the storehouse with the caution of shy animals that leave their lairs blinded by the light after hibernating, dazed by so much sleep. Arnaud headed an impromptu procession that sleepwalked along the coastline in religious silence, without saying a word about the spectacle before their eyes. The vegetable patch and its black soil, the buildings, the dock, all traces of civilization, all human undertakings — which had taken years to bring to fruition — had all disappeared.

The fresh guano had also disappeared. The tons of excrement from hundreds of birds, deposited on land for years, had been dragged out to sea. Cleared and freed of the soft, greenish-black layer spread all over that appeared to be its second nature, Clipperton now displayed the cruel ancestral grayness of fossilized guano. There was a glorious stillness in the sky and in the ocean, a pristine calm. Clipperton lay in this half of the universe, clean and empty, virginal, like at the dawn of creation. The crabs and boobies had returned, by the dozens, by the hundreds, as if during their absence they had tripled in number. Now they were swarming around the bald rock, sure of themselves, arrogant lords of the reconquered realm.

The men walked to the south and found the lighthouse intact at the top of the rock.

“At least we have this left,” said Ramón Arnaud in an old man’s voice he did not recognize.

Victoriano Alvarez, the lighthouse keeper, came to meet them. The color of his skin had turned ashen, but his eyes sparkled with an unusual phosphorescence.

“Any news, soldier?” Arnaud asked, curling his mustache at the absurdity of his words under the circumstances.

“Yes, sir!” was his answer. “Come and see for yourself.”

They all followed Victoriano to the entrance of the lighthouse lair. He pushed the door open, and Captain Arnaud went in. In a few seconds his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness inside. Then he saw them.

Lying on top of one another, asleep, their hair golden like that of the saints in colonial altars, there were nine men, one woman, and two children. Though they were lying down, it was easy to see how tall they were. The men had yellow beards, like prophets, and the skin of the woman was so transparent that one could follow, as on a map, the lilac veins of her arms and legs.

In disbelief, Arnaud looked at these mysterious beings come out of nowhere. Fallen from the sky, like the white gods the Aztec prophecies had announced. But their wet clothes and the tiredness of their unhinged bodies denied any such divine nature. On the contrary, their desolate, forlorn air was unmistakably human.

“Where did they come from?” Arnaud managed to ask after observing them for a while.

“They don’t speak our language,” Victoriano responded, “but they were shipwrecked out there.”

The soldier pointed to the sea, and Arnaud saw, about a mile from the beach, practically underwater and lying on her side, a three-masted schooner. The Pacific Ocean was so placid that morning that the vessel seemed to be catching up on sleep, like her crew.

“All night long I heard their ship horn braving the storm,” Victoriano said. “Uuuuuuu uuuuuuu, she cried, howling like a ghost. It made my hair stand on end. Uuuuuuu, so sad, so piercing, uuuuuuu. I thought it was the Weeping Woman, wailing for us.”

Listening to Victoriano, Arnaud remembered hearing that anguished sound for hours, but his brain had refused to register it.

“It seems they got lost in the hurricane,” Victoriano Alvarez continued, “and the Clipperton lighthouse attracted them. That’s what I make of it, sir, though I couldn’t understand a word they said. They thought they could find refuge here. That’s it. And of course, their ship got smashed to hell against the reefs. When their boat sank, they kept afloat in the dark, holding on to the children so they wouldn’t drown. Maybe that’s what happened. They must have spent the night clinging like monkeys to floating pieces of wood, and at dawn they swam to shore. I saw them there and helped them. It would be better, Captain, when they wake up, for them to tell you their own story. You know so many languages, sir, you could understand them.”

Ramón Arnaud felt compassion for this group of blond strangers lying at his feet. Perhaps they were not asleep but had fainted.

“Fate is a prankster,” he finally said, too perplexed and exhausted to add a sense of drama to his voice. “In one blow it leaves us without food and brings bring us twelve extra mouths to feed.”

Mexico City, Today

THINKING ABOUT TIRSA RENDÓN, I read old novels and documents from the beginning of the century to find out about camp followers. There is not much about them. They were the dogs of war. Half heroines and half whores, they marched behind the troops, following their johns; the men on horses, the women on foot.

They would sleep with a man for a couple of pesos and then leave him the next morning on a whim, unpredictable and slippery in their affairs. Or they could be loyal to him until death; get killed for just giving him a sip of water; steal or have knife fights over a chicken in order to have something they could give him to eat. They were the females in the troop, daughters of the hard life. Filthy, ragged, and drunk, like their johns. Tender and brave like them.

They knew how to do many things, and were indispensable to the men. Without them, the men would have died of hunger, of filth, of loneliness. Always agitated, always shouting, always carrying on their heads the water jugs, the luggage, and the cured meats. On the river-banks they washed their petticoats and their men’s uniforms. At night they went into the barracks or the military camps and in smoky bonfires they prepared fried chicken or turkey, made fatty salt pork soup, threw dough balls into the fire. They slept on the floor under their serapes, legs entangled with their soldiers. On very cold daybreaks, they sang corridos and mañanitas in their shrill voices, and warmed up the air with their steaming hot coffee. Then they picked up their rags and their things and left while the officers shouted at them.

“Out with these women!”

They were also in charge of the prayers: they prayed for the soldiers who were alive so they would not die, and for the dead ones so they would not have to suffer in hell. Rather than to Jesus Christ or to the spirits, they prayed to the Saint of Cabora, Teresita Urrea, a living virgin from Chihuahua who was catatonic and epileptic, and who performed miracles and blessed the carbines so that for each and every bullet, a dead man. The camp followers sought shelter under her great power and hung around their necks pieces of Teresita’s poor garments, with tufts of her sacred hair. When a soldier died, they cried for him: with a lot of feeling or with a lot of wailing if he was someone they loved; and routinely just to fulfill their tradition if he was unknown.

They were also in charge of looting. After a battle, when victory was on their side, the camp followers sacked the conquered towns, the abandoned ranches. Stepping on the wounded, kicking aside the corpses, they stole, raided houses, set them on fire, and all bloody, black with soot, and intoxicated with victory, they returned dragging their booty.

As for smuggling, they were experts. In their bodices, in their babies’ diapers, and in between the corn tortillas, they knew how to hide the marijuana leaves. To save them for their men, they knew how to escape the controls and the searches in the barracks. They were carriers of the yerba santa, the only true relief from their suffering and helplessness, the liberating weed among the soldiers at war.

The camp followers were also the news service for the troops. The men were confined, isolated, and got no news from outside. They knew only their officers’ shouts, they saw nothing but their own misery, they wished nothing more than to do their time in order to leave the post. Whatever happened in the rest of the world did not penetrate the barrack walls. The camp followers, on the other hand, came and went, had a chat with the storekeeper who knew all the gossip in town, with the railroad man who brought news from distant places, with the general’s mistress, who pricked up her ears to hear the plans of the high command. Through their women the troops found out if their battalion would take part in an attack or travel to another town. Thanks to the women they did not forget that there was still a world outside.

Given the opportunity, the women also participated in the fighting. At the death of her man, a woman inherited his horse, wore his cartridge belt, and shouldered his rifle.

Tirsa Rendón, Lieutenant Cardona’s woman, was one of them. A camp follower.

They met one day, when military life united them on the paths of Yucatán, or on the roads of Cananea. Perhaps they celebrated an urgent wedding of love and convenience, such as the one told — with the same words but different characters — by General Urquizo in his book Tropa vieja. He knew all about such things from his years with the troops.

Young Tirsa and handsome Cardona had never met before. Perhaps they sat together on the train one day when the troops were being transfered. Fate squeezed one against the other in a car packed with soldiers, camp followers, and animals. The air was thick with sweat, dirty feet, rawhide, rifle oil, foods stored in pockets, farts, and burps.

The jolts of the train brought them closer until she was almost on his lap. They both liked their skin contacts. They found pleasure in each other’s smell and body warmth. Perhaps he noticed her eyes, her very white whites and very dark irises, and perhaps she saw his smile.

After their flirting briefly and brusquely, came the ceremony, what General Urquizo called a “wedding in pure military style.”

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Tirsa Rendón, and yours?”

“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 isle. 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 smashed 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.

During the first weeks she had worked so hard at the Arnaud home that she had no time at all to spare. She watered the vegetable patch, ran after the children, washed, starched, and ironed the shirts, shined the silver, helped in the kitchen by grinding corn and washing dishes. After the hurricane things changed. The children did not want to be looked after, there was no starch for the clothes, no patch to water, no silver to shine, and, with all the scarcities that strangled Clipperton, the only thing they had plenty of was time.

Altagracia equipped herself with sponges, brushes, and buckets of water, and step by step, she approached Schultz’s cabin. She saw him standing with the chain around his neck, lonely, broken, and filthy, like a big bear in captivity, and right away her fear melted away.

“Come, come,” she said while approaching him, as if she were calling a domestic animal.

Schultz growled a little but took the piece of bacon she offered him and allowed her to get closer. Cautiously, she sponged the encrusted dirt off his back. Each time he growled, she gave him a piece of bacon, until she managed to get him passably clean. Then she helped him put on a grungy pair of pants that she found on the floor, tossed in a corner, the first piece of clothing Schultz wore during his period of madness. Then she brought him fried fish and a cup of steaming hot coffee. He ate the fish but spilled the coffee on the floor. She swept around his bed, looked for his best shirts, and took them with her.

The next day she came back with his shirts mended, washed, and ironed, and since it was a chilly morning, she lit a fire to heat the buckets of water. Schultz reacted so well to the warm water that he allowed her to wash his matted hair. Altagracia did it very carefully, massaging the scalp with the tips of her fingers, as she did with the Arnaud children. He also let her cut his nails, which already looked like claws, but growled in protest when she tried to cut his toenails as well.

In a few weeks tremendous progress was made. He allowed her to comb his hair, spruce him up, and even perfume him as if she were playing with a doll. She learned not to take any black food to him because he rejected it, and, once in a while, to smuggle a shot of mezcal to him. She polished his boots, darned his socks, brushed his big yellow teeth with ashes. She took him out for a walk, and he accepted being pulled by the chain like a lap dog.

Day by day, the cleaning up and feeding sessions became lengthier and more elaborate. At the beginning she had stayed from six to six thirty in the morning, and it got to be from six in the morning to six in the evening. Altagracia came at daybreak and returned to the Arnauds at dusk. When she left, Schultz was still chained to his post, sitting on his bed, playing solitary chess, updating the Pacific Phosphate books, looking at the stars, and waiting for her return at dawn.

He called her Alta or Altita, and she called him Towhead, German, or gringo. He worked hard to teach her how to play chess, she wanted him to learn Spanish.

“Caballa,” he said, holding the horse chess piece.

“Caballa to you. It is called caballo.”

“Caballa to you, too. That’s not the way you move that piece.”

“And how is it that, before, no one could understand you, and now, suddenly, you talk like a person?”

“Because now I want to, and before I didn’t.”

That was true. For the first time in his long stay in America, Gustav Schultz felt the desire and the need to communicate with someone.

“And how come you were crazy before and now you’re not?”

“I was not crazy before and I’m not crazy now.”

His aggressive behavior had disappeared. However, he still had the chain on his neck, and when someone approached him other than Altagracia, he roared and smashed dishes on the floor.

“I’m going to ask for this animal chain to be taken off,” she said.

“Don’t ask for anything. If they take off the chain and declare me sane, they will never let you come back to me anymore.”

“I am going to tell everybody that you can speak Spanish.”

“No, don’t say a word. I don’t want to talk to them.”

Their passion started slowly, softly. They felt it coming once she took off the shawl that always covered her head, and her hair, liberated, dropped down to her ankles. It was a yard and a half of natural silk, a black-as-night cascade, a shining animal with a life of its own. Schultz could not believe what he saw. He finally dared to touch it, as if putting his hands into a treasure chest full of precious stones.

“This is pirate Clipperton’s treasure. Everybody tried so hard, but I am the one who found it.”

“It’s just black hair, like everybody else’s. Your hair is nicer, because it’s blond.”

“You don’t know what treasure you have on your head, my child.”

“I bet you don’t know how to braid it.”

“I bet I do.”

He helped her lose her virginity with tenderness and without any pressure. From then on, he devoted himself to teaching her how to make love with the same patience and wisdom with which he was teaching her to play chess.

Three months had elapsed since the hurricane, and the ship from the Mexican Navy was already two months late. Captain Jens Jensen, who had felt hopeful about the guarantees of government help Arnaud had offered him, came to the conclusion that it was absurd and suicidal to keep waiting. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became, and he knew that he should have realized this since the day following his forced arrival at Clipperton.

He asked Arnaud’s permission to repair a rowboat.

It was a ten-foot boat, big enough for four men. He supplied it with four oars and improvised a mast and a sail. When it was ready, he informed Arnaud of his decision to send part of his crew — his best four seamen — to the Mexican coast to ask for help.

“You are sending them to their deaths,” Arnaud told him.

“Perhaps not,” answered Jensen.

“They are going to be smashed against the reefs. They’ll get lost at sea. The dark nights will turn into nightmares. They’ll run out of food and water. And the sharks will attack them.”

“You are an army man, Captain Arnaud, and you mistrust the sea. I am a mariner and I can’t stay locked on land, doing nothing, abusing your hospitality, and risking the lives of your people and mine.”

“Better wait a little longer. The supply boat should come within two weeks, God willing.”

“You said it: God willing. With all respect for your beliefs, I prefer to place my trust in my own men.”

“Well, then, you have my blessings. May God protect your men.”

The following day, June 4, Second Lieutenant Hansen and three crewmen, Oliver, Henrikson, and Miller, sailed toward Mexico in the small sailboat, with some navigational instruments Arnaud had provided, and food and water for twelve days.

The entire Clipperton population — except Gustav Schultz and Altagracia Quiroz, who were in a world of their own — stood at the dock to watch them leave.

On the U.S.S. Cleveland, Heading for Acapulco, 1914

1. On 21 June, at about 1500, while the Cleveland was anchored at Acapulco, a small boat approached. It was commanded by L. Hansen, second lieutenant from the U.S. schooner Nokomis, with a crew of two. Having left Clipperton Island 17 days earlier, they arrived in very poor physical condition and reported having lost a man en route. The lieutenant also reported that the Nokomis had sailed from San Francisco under Captain Jens Jensen and was shipwrecked at Clipperton before dawn on 28 February 1914, with the following crew: Captain Jens Jensen, his wife, and two children; First Lieutenant C. Halvorsen, Second Lieutenant L. Hansen; and J. Oliver, H. Henrikson, J. Halvorsen, and W. Miller, seamen; H. Brown, shipboy; and H. Knowles, cook. Hansen stated that when he left the island, those who remained had supplies for only 17 days.

2. In view of this report, I considered they were in urgent need of help, so I left for Clipperton at 0930 the following morning. I had notified the British vice consul and the London agents of the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd., who were sending 200 bales of foodstuffs to their Clipperton representative and to the Mexican troops posted there, consisting of two officers, eleven men, and their families. The Cleveland arrived at the island on the 25th at 1100.

3. That afternoon the above-mentioned individuals came aboard, together with the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd. representative, Mr. G. Schultz, his wife, and daughter. Mr. Schultz, a German citizen who had stayed on the island for several years representing that company, was in a personal situation. His relationship with the officer in charge of the post on the island had reached such antagonism that the commanding officer reported that Mr. Schultz, in his opinion, had lost his mind. From his side, Mr. Schultz reported on the Clipperton shipwreck of Captain Jens Jensen’s ship at dawn on 28 February 1914, and Schultz also said that his relationship with the Mexican officer in charge had soured. In consequence, I considered it prudent to take Mr. Schultz and his family to Acapulco.

4. At 1520 I greeted a Mexican boat commanded by the port captain, Ramón Arnaud Vignon, who signed the receipt for the 200 bales of foodstuffs. The port captain departed the Cleveland at 1555.

(Signed)

Captain W. Williams

U.S.S. Cleveland, Clipperton Island, 1914

ON JUNE 25 Ramón Arnaud was having some fish with his wife and children when he saw a ship looming on the horizon. His reaction was that of a person watching a loved one return, because he thought the ship belonged to the Mexican Navy. They had finally come to take care of him! Where was Captain Jensen? Ramón already knew what to tell him. He would say, “Don’t you see it was better to wait? I knew my superiors would not fail me.”

Alicia saw her husband instantly shift from joy to dejection: his face turned paper white as he realized his mistake. The approaching vessel was flying the American flag. It was the U.S.S. Cleveland coming to the rescue of the crew of the Nokomis.

In spite of the many requests to his superiors that Arnaud had sent through the four Dutchmen, the ship had not come for him but for Jensen’s people. Jensen had been right to mistrust his words and to act on his own, Ramón Arnaud thought bitterly.

His disappointment was such that while all the others rushed to the dock, he remained seated without moving a finger for the whole hour it took the ship to anchor on the other side of the reef. A boat landed with two emissaries, and finally a seaman handed him a note from the captain of the Cleveland, together with a letter from Mexico.

The note from the captain — named Williams — indicated that his intent was only to take the crew from the Nokomis with him, inquire about Gustav Schultz, deliver some provisions, and offer help. The letter was from his father-in-law, Don Félix Rovira, and it was addressed to Alicia. She read it out loud.

My dearest child:

Joy fills my heart. I do not need to tell you that I am leaving for the port right now, and I shall be waiting for you, even though I might have to wait there a whole week for you.

My dream of every single day, during all these years, will finally come true. I am going to see you again — you and Ramón and my grandchildren — and be with you without the threat of a new separation.

I looked for Colonel Avalos to inform him of your urgent needs but he is no longer in Acapulco. He has been transferred, and I was unable to find out his address. The new commander of the zone is Colonel Luis Griviera, who admitted to me that, due to the constant rebel attacks, he is in no position to be able to send ships to Clipperton. He suggested it is best that you return on the Cleveland, taking advantage of the captain’s kind offer to render this service. My impression of Colonel Griviera is that he is too busy with his own survival to attend to anyone else’s.

I have not been able to talk in person with the three Dutch sailors who brought news of you to this port, but I know they reported that there were provisions on the island for three or four more days. I pray to God they last until you get the boxes the British consul is sending.

I am writing this to you in haste, my dear, for I only learned of your situation barely two days ago. I left Salina Cruz immediately for Acapulco, and the efforts on your behalf have not given me a minute to spare. The American ship that takes this missive to you and has promised to bring you back here sails very shortly. For that reason I will not comment on the situation our homeland is going through. There will be time enough to discuss these things (though it seems there is not enough time for anyone to comprehend so many chaotic events).

I am sending you, yes, newspaper clippings about the United States invasion of Veracruz. It has caused an outrage all over the country and, I daresay, in the whole continent. I think that Ramón should be aware of this, since you will be sailing on an invader’s warship. As to the personal intentions of Captain Williams, I think they are honest and humanitarian. By all means, I believe it is of the utmost urgency that you return with him, since the possibilities for a Mexican ship to sail to Clipperton seem remote under the present circumstances. My heart will summon the strength that it no longer possesses in order to withstand this period of waiting until your return.

Your father

“Wait a minute,” Ramón said when she finished reading the letter. “Let’s take this one step at a time, because I don’t understand anything. I wrote to the authorities, and your father answers. I ask for a Mexican ship, and we get an American one. And what’s this invasion of Veracruz? Let me see the clippings.”

They quickly read every word in the clippings sent by Don Félix and concluded that General Huerta was officially in power but without popular support, which was on the side of the revolutionaries, and without the support of the United States, which had invaded the port of Veracruz. The events had come to a climax on April 7. In Tampico an officer and seven men from the American cruiser Dolphin had disembarked in order to buy fuel. Once on land they were arrested by Huerta’s officials. Two hours later, a Mexican general set them free, apologizing for the mistake. President Wilson demanded that the Mexicans raise the American flag and, in reparation, honor it with a twenty-one-gun salute. General Huerta answered that Mexico would comply with the twenty-one-gun salute provided that the Mexican flag was equally honored by the United States. Seizing upon this as an excuse, Wilson ordered the military intervention he had long prepared, and sent his fleet into Mexican waters. On April 21, the U.S. Marines occupied the Custom House in Veracruz. After the Mexican Naval Academy cadets had resisted the attack for twelve hours and suffered the loss of 126 patriots, on April 22 the post surrendered. Thousands of Mexicans all over the country volunteered to join Huerta’s army to fight the invaders. At the same time, the revolutionary forces commanded by Venustiano Carranza, who controlled more than half the territory, also opposed the foreign invasion.

“Why on earth does your father think that we are leaving on that ship?”

“He is taking for granted that Mexican ships are not coming anymore.”

“What do you mean, ‘not coming’? Nobody has ordered me to leave this post.”

“You don’t have orders to leave, but you don’t have orders to stay either. I think the truth is, Ramón, that nobody cares. With the country in such a chaotic situation, probably nobody even remembers we exist.”

“The United States invades, all of Mexico resists, and do you think I’m going to surrender Clipperton without a shot? Is that what you’re asking me?”

“I’m not asking you anything. I have never asked you for anything”—Alicia’s voice broke, and she began to cry. Softly at first, then emotionally, interrupting to wipe her eyes with a handkerchief and blowing her nose. But the tears rushed out in their own uncontrollable dynamic, making her breathing difficult.

“Have a good cry,” Arnaud said. “Let it all come out, all the complaints you have held back for six years.”

Finally she was able to speak again.

“I have never asked for us to leave, and I am not going to ask you now. But why don’t you realize that it makes me sad to think of my father standing there at the port, waiting for us. How can you expect me not to be heartbroken seeing that those uneducated, underfed creatures running around are my own children? How could I not think that passing up this last chance to leave would force us to stay here forever, and perish. ..”

Alicia could have kept talking for hours, protesting, complaining about her bad luck, telling her husband all that she had not said in six years about her marriage and her life on the isle. But at that moment Captain Jensen joined them. He was shaved and groomed, and Arnaud felt somewhat intimidated by the other’s regained position as a member of the civilized world.

“Better hush, dear, Jensen is coming,” he interrupted her. “Tell him that I am not in. I don’t want to see him before I know what I should do.”

“And if he asks me where you are?” Alicia was still sobbing, her eyes red and her nose stuffy.

“Tell him I am at a Gala Ball. Or at the horse races.”

“And what about me? Is it all right for him to see me crying?” she screamed at Ramón’s back as he started to leave. “Well, fine! Let Jensen see me, let everybody see me crying! I am sick of pretending to be happy!”

Arnaud escaped through the back door and walked along the beach, taking long strides over the moving carpet of red crabs. He stepped on several of them at every move, and the crackling sound of the crushed crab shells pierced his ears. This triggered the nervous twitch of his upper lip, and at regular intervals his face contracted in an involuntary grimace.

He was trying to think, he needed to understand, but, like a clock without a spring, his mind was not responding. It had stopped. Was the situation as drastic as his father-in-law had made it appear? Was it a black-and-white choice — either to leave now or to stay forever? — or were there intermediate shades that Don Félix as an anguished father could not perceive? Was Huerta’s downfall and the collapse of the federal army imminent? Don Félix had always favored the rebels and perhaps that made him overestimate their importance. Or was he right this time? Even so, the foreign invasion had changed everything; it had to, and internal differences would end at the threat from the outside. Wouldn’t they? That man Carranza would offer a truce to General Huerta while they fought the invader together. Or would he? If the enemy made the federal army, his army, surrender, what role would he have in Clipperton? Why must he stay if Avalos and all the others went their own ways? However, it is the rats that abandon a sinking ship. Arnaud had no information, and his head was spinning in search of inspiration. He needed to guess right. He read and reread the letter and the clippings, looking for a solution in every phrase, in every word.

Images were flashing fast in his mind, driving him to despair. Two were much more insistent than the others. They were contradictory, irreconcilable; one he would have to reject because there was no room for both, and his head was about to crack like the crabs he was stepping on.

In one he saw Alicia crying and his children abandoned, wild, badly undernourished, and sick.

“I cannot stay here,” he said out loud. “I cannot stay here.”

In the other he saw himself a few years back, facing the blackened walls of the prison at Tlatelolco and making his solemn promise that “the next time I will stand firm, come what may, next time I will prevail. Better dead, a thousand times better, than being humiliated again.”

“I cannot leave,” he contradicted himself. “I cannot leave.”

He looked for Cardona. He found him standing in the shed, trying to take his first steps using two pieces of wood as crutches.

“Cardona, sit down. And think carefully about what I am going to tell you.”

“The gringo ship arrived to rescue the Dutchmen, right?” asked the lieutenant.

“Yes.”

“Then the four on the little boat made it to Acapulco—”

“Yes, but only three of them got there.”

“That was not a bad deal then. Who didn’t make it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Another Flying Dutchman who eats melted iron and drinks bile.”

“May he rest in peace.”

“Ramón, tell me, do you really believe that someone who dies like that, without a Christian burial, can ever find peace? I would not like to be floating about for all eternity.”

“Who knows? But there is a serious matter here, Secundino. Listen to this.”

Ramón read his father-in-law’s letter, and then the news about the invasion. Cardona did not utter a word until he finished.

“Twenty-one-gun salute? Sure. Right away. Just give me a minute—”

“The captain of the Cleveland is also offering to take us to Acapulco. You already know what my father-in-law says — If not now, when? On the other hand, those who are rescuing us here are the same ones who invaded over there. It’s not an easy thing to decide, and I would like to know your opinion.”

Cardona scratched his head.

“What could happen if we leave? Wait — I mean for a few days, in order to make contact with Colonel Avalos, or with someone who could tell us what’s what, who could tell us what the plan is. Hey, we cannot continue the way we are. This looks like an orphanage.”

“And if this maneuver is just an enemy trap?”

“It looks more like a friendly trap. Besides, which enemy? The gringos or the French? Aren’t we supposed to fight against the French to keep from losing this island?”

“From what I see, now it’s the gringos we are fighting against in order not to lose all of Mexico. I don’t know, Cardona,” he said in a firmer voice and straightening his back. “However, I feel it’s our duty to stay in honor of the hundred and twenty-six Veracruz patriots.”

“Well, yes,” Cardona offered after some thought. “But Veracruz was invaded, and Clipperton was not. ..”

“But we don’t know what might happen.”

“No, we don’t. But there isn’t much we could do anyhow.”

“We could offer the ultimate sacrifice for our homeland, like our fellow soldiers in Veracruz. ..”

“What a darned life.”

“Yes, sure enough, life could be better.”

They remained in silence for a long time, until Arnaud got up.

“I want to make clear to you that your condition as a seriously wounded soldier places you in a special situation, very different from mine. We cannot take care of you properly here, and you have every right in the world to leave in order to get proper treatment. If you leave, you will not fail Mexico, you will not fail your military honor, you will not fail me or anybody else.”

Lieutenant Cardona did not have to think much about it.

“Do you remember what you told me in the cave during the hurricane?” he asked Arnaud. “Either the two of us live, or the two of us die. That was what you said. It was good then, it is good now. If you stay, I stay.”

“Let’s shake on it.”

“Here.”

“I must look for Alicia,” Arnaud said walking toward the door. “She had never complained, and today when she did, I left her talking to the wall.”

At that moment Sergeant Irra rushed in. He had been looking for Arnaud everywhere on the island. He informed him that the captain of the Cleveland wanted to meet the port captain to deliver the food supplies; that he had orders from the British consul to take Gustav Schultz to Acapulco, if he so wished; and that Jens Jensen and the rest of the Dutchmen wanted to say good-bye personally.

“You take care of going to the Cleveland for the provisions,” Arnaud said to Cardona, “and tell the captain that I will make the official clearing later.”

“I can barely walk, Ramón.”

“Have some of the men carry you.”

“But I wonder, wouldn’t it be better if you went? In what language do you want me to communicate with him?”

“Find a way. I must talk with Alicia first, the rest will have to wait.”

“And what do we do with Schultz, Captain?” asked Irra, waiting for orders. “Do we let him loose, or do we take him in tied up?”

“Set him him free, Irra, and we’ll see what happens. If he becomes too nervous, triple up his dosage of passionflower tea, but make sure he boards the Cleveland,” answered Arnaud, considering the matter closed.

On the other side of the island, Gustav Schultz and Altagracia had not seen the ship approach and were totally unaware of the situation. Everything remained the same, immutable, inside the hermetic bubble where they had taken refuge. Even in his madness, Schultz had the lucidity to understand that the sweet, homely girl was enough of a pretext for him to come to terms with reason and to anchor himself in reality. Thanks to her he did not feel alone for the first time in his life.

That day his warm bath had taken two hours, and according to the ritual they had established, it concluded with the act of love.

Schultz had Altagracia lying by his side, her head on his shoulder. He found serenity in the shade of her extraordinary hair.

“I am going to count every hair on your head, one by one,” he would say, “and every day I am going to count them again, to make sure there is none missing.”

His heart was at peace, his body relaxed, and the fresh sweep of the trade winds carried away all his past anguish.

“The madman has raped the child!”

The wild shouts of the sergeant broke into a thousand pieces the gentle calmness. Before Schultz could get up, Irra and three other men lunged at him and beat him with their bare fists and whatever else they found handy.

“Dirty gringo, get your hands off that girl!” they shouted.

Altagracia got scared like a little animal and ran into the cabin. Through the cracks in the wall she saw how they tied his hands and took him away, shoving and pulling him by his chain.

She overcame her fear and ran after them.

“Where are you taking him?”

“A ship came for him. Today he goes to hell, the madman.”

“Don’t take him that way, Irra,” she pleaded, “at least let him put some clothes on. Don’t you have some respect for a human being?”

“He’s more beastly than the beasts.”

“You are the wild beasts,” she murmured, and while the soldiers struggled at dragging him, she managed to get him into a pair of pants and a shirt.

Schultz roared with a pained blind fury. Everyone could hear his screams, which echoed through the cliffs, but only Altagracia was able to hear a soft, dry cracking sound that escaped from his breast like a sigh.

“They are breaking your soul, Towhead,” she said.

On the other side of the island, Ramón Arnaud had met his wife. She was not crying anymore. Broom in hand, she was sweeping the ramshackle porch at home.

“Why are you sweeping?” he asked her.

“Because I already know what your decision will be. And if we are going to continue living here, it might as well be clean.”

“Come, I want you to understand something.”

They sat on the floor of the eastern terrace where sometime in the past there had been a hammock for watching the sun come up.

“Alicia, do you remember that I told you once I was doing nothing because I felt it was not my war? Well, now I feel this really is my war. I still don’t know whether we should leave or stay; the only thing I know is that I have to fight this war.”

At the dock Arnaud met Cardona, who was hobbling past the piles of wooden boxes, recording everything in a notebook.

“Two hundred boxes, Ramón,” the lieutenant shouted with enthusiasm. “We have dried beef, wafers, sausages, lard, coffee, you name it. Enough for three more months.”

“That will give us the option to stay or to leave.”

“What I would like to know is who sent this food and for whom.”

“Who else could it be? The Mexican Army sent it to us, of course.”

“I don’t believe so, Ramón. With the little English I know, I understood it came from the British consul for Gustav Schultz.”

“Then, let him leave it to us as his legacy. Any citrus fruit?” Arnaud inquired.

“Haven’t seen any.”

“That’s bad news. Very bad.”

Arnaud got into a boat and asked to be taken to the Cleveland. He still did not know what his decision would be, and he could think of nothing on the way. At 1520 he boarded, and Captain Williams received him in his private office, adjacent to his cabin. It was a small interior room, all paneled in cedar, with the scent of good wood and fine tobacco. On his working table there were writing pens and an inkwell, and a machine of such novel design that it took Arnaud some time before he figured out it was a typewriter. The furniture was sparse but deep cushioned, covered in barely faded, wine-red velour. A Persian rug covered the floor, and a copper and opaline glass lamp lit the room evenly, giving the effect of natural light. In one corner was a trunk in embossed leather, and, in the opposite corner, a heavy iron stove obviously in disuse and covered with books.

Captain Williams’s physique seemed more at home in this intimate environment than in the impersonal harshness of his battleship. He was an older man, pale, and so refined-looking that he seemed never to have been exposed to direct sunlight or even a sea breeze. He wore very thin rimmed spectacles, and one could detect a discreet scent of cologne. He offered Arnaud a seat and a cup of espresso along with a glass of cognac. As they exchanged the customary greetings, Arnaud kept fingering the velour, the leather, the warm cup, and took in the wonderful scents of wood, cologne, and tobacco, his body inspired by the memory of these almost forgotten textures and smells. An uncomfortable nostalgia for a better world was beginning to creep over him. He felt dirty, unkempt, smelly, and jarred by a great irrational impulse to leave. He had delayed this interview as much as possible because he knew it would place him in a disadvantageous position. After not even two minutes, and in spite of Williams’s politeness, he did not wish to prolong this meeting a second longer than purely necessary.

Arnaud expressed gratitude for the boxes of supplies, and Williams asked about Gustav Schultz. Ramón, who had completely forgotten the German fellow, explained that he was being brought on board because this strange man’s altered state, after suffering several mental breakdowns, had made it advisable to sedate him before departure. He spoke ill of Schultz, in too many words and with too many adjectives, which he regretted, noting the detachment in Williams’s blank expression as he listened.

Looking at the list of names, Williams said that Lieutenant Cardona had informed him that two ladies, Daría and Jesusa — already on board — would travel with Mr. Schultz as his wife and daughter.

“That is correct, sir. They are his wife and daughter,” answered Arnaud emphatically, but realized his error a second later. He understood the sense of Williams’s query when he imagined the scene as sharply as if he were actually seeing the two women climbing on board and embracing their Dutch lovers. His face turned red.

“Well, more or less,” he stammered, not knowing what else to say.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Captain, I understand; it was just a routine question.”

The issue of Daría and Jesusa, which he had overlooked, had already placed him in a bad light. And he knew things would get worse. In openly cordial tones, Williams repeated his offer to take him to Mexico together with his family and the rest of the people in Clipperton. Jensen had told him about their hospitality and generosity in spite of conditions. “That kind of conduct deserves a reciprocal gesture,” Williams added.

“I am deeply grateful, but I have not received orders yet from my superiors to abandon my post.”

“At this point your superiors are in no condition to issue orders, not even to themselves,” answered Captain Williams with a kind smile. “The federal army is disbanded.”

Arnaud felt deeply hurt. Realizing it, Williams retreated.

“It’s just my personal opinion, of course,” he said. “Don’t take offense.”

Ramón Arnaud took time to answer, to feel the weight that each of his words would have, and finally said, “Having to take care of public order makes things difficult for Colonel Huerta, and the arbitrary invasion by your country makes things difficult for my country. Those are two powerful reasons why I cannot abandon my post.”

“Everything has changed since you were sent here. Everything. It is not just Mexico’s internal situation, it is, above all, the war.”

“Are you referring to the war between your country and mine?”

“No, Captain Arnaud. I am referring to the war that is about to break out between one half of the world and the other half. I suppose that you are aware of this,” answered Williams, while offering him a Havana cigar. “Would you care for one?”

Ramón felt the rug pulled out from under him. The news had jolted and stunned him like an exploding grenade. It was too much. What war? What world? Why? Which side would Mexico be on? He was dying to know, and his heart began racing like a mad horse. He had to summon all his military pride and all of his willpower in order to lie.

“Of course, Captain Williams. I am fully aware of the imminence of war. But that does not affect my decision.”

His own words reverberated in his head: “But that does not affect my decision.” He was closing the last door, he felt. This was suicide, and he was condemning his men, his wife, his children. But he contained himself and did not retract. From the corner of his eye he saw the Cuban cigar Williams was offering him. It was a Flor de Lobeto, fragrant and magnificent. For many months he had not seen one. He would have gladly exchanged his little finger for it. But he lied.

“A Havana cigar? No thanks, I just had one.”

“As you wish,” he heard the other man say.

Time was melting in his head. The minutes stretched with rubbery elasticity, unbearably: “As… you… wish.” Between one word and the next there was an eternity, and meanwhile, the only possibility of being rescued vanished, escaped like the smoke of the cigar that Williams had just lit.

Suddenly, time recovered its usual speed. The Mexican captain felt an unexpected tingling in the pit of the stomach, and an irrepressible urge to live made him speak.

“However, Captain Williams, since this is a question that also affects my men, I would like to ask for some time to consult with them before I give you a definitive answer.”

“Of course, Captain. Think about it, and consult with them.”

Williams pulled his watch chain and checked the time.

“I wish to sail in an hour, if there are no objections,” he said.

They said their good-byes. On deck Ramón met Jens Jensen, his wife, Mary, as evanescent as ever, and the rest of the Dutchmen. They embraced and wished one another good luck.

Once in the rowboat on his way to the dock, Arnaud breathed deeply, relaxed on the seat with a brief smile, and thought: There is an invasion, a civil war, and a world war while I am here, wrapped in my own thoughts, worrying about whether booby eggs are better fried or scrambled.

It was already 1555. Before 1655 he had to make the most serious decision of his life.

After landing, he told Cardona: “A world war broke out. Or is about to. Don’t ask me any more. I did not dare ask, I didn’t want to concede to that gringo that I didn’t know. We’ll find out when the Mexican boat gets here.”

“If we wait that long, we’ll find out who started it and who won, all at the same time.”

Arnaud and Cardona summoned the rest of their people, and, a few minutes later, Sergeant Irra appeared on the dock holding Gustav Schultz by the arm. Due to the triple dosage of passionflower tea, the poor German fellow struggled, like a sleepwalker or a drunkard, in an iridescent, blurred, elusive world. He sensed vaguely that something ominous was about to happen to him, but he couldn’t figure out what. Even his own anguish dissolved into a nameless feeling. His head was turning around, then it stopped; it rushed forward; it swooped down in a painful and confused trajectory to the depths. His feet tripped forward; he mouthed incoherent words; he was beating Sergeant Irra clumsily.

Altagracia Quiroz ran after them. The moment he saw her, Schultz was able to collect all the loose pieces of his delirium. With a violent jolt he broke free from Irra, embraced Altagracia, and even though he could not fully control his numb, sticky tongue, the words he uttered came from deep inside.

“Come with me, Altita.”

“I can’t, Towhead. I wish I could. I came with Mrs. Alicia, and I have to stay with her.”

Recovering, Sergeant Irra again grabbed Schultz and threw him into the rowboat, where two soldiers were waiting to take him to the Cleveland.

The boat left. Schultz defied his condition and the rocking of the waves, and managed to stand up.

“I’ll come back for you, Altagracia,” he shouted. “I swear to you. I swear to you I’ll get you out of here and marry you. I swear!”

The ocean was gray, the sky was violet, and the girl remained at the dock, alone. She heard the German’s words, and to bid him farewell she took off the shawl covering her head. Her hair cascaded almost to the ground, sparkling under the afternoon sun, and waved softly in the breeze like a black flag.

In the meantime, Ramón Arnaud ordered the troops to interrupt their tasks and report in formation to the plaza — where their old vegetable garden, now barren, had been — in full uniform, rifles and all. Young Pedro Carvajal made the bugle call, and the men mustered.

“Platoon, charge… weapons!” barked Cardona. Arnaud, next to him, just watched.

The ten soldiers who made up the garrison were standing in the inhospitable and harsh wasteland. If a soldier had shoes, he had no shirt; if he had a rifle, he had no sword; if he had a cartridge belt, he had no ammunition. They had only whatever the hurricane had not taken away. Around them in a semicircle, the women stood watching, babes in their arms. They were all battered people in a battered place.

“Present… arms!”

They sang the Mexican national anthem and raised the new flag, the one nuns had embroidered. When it was up, Arnaud saw that it was as faded and frayed as the old one. There was no red or green, the white center now extended to the sides. And without the eagle and the serpent, it was nothing but a white sheet in the sun.

Easy come, easy go, Ramón thought, and watched his people. We look like ghosts, and on top of that, we belong to an army which no longer exists. How could he convince them to go on, not to quit? Worse yet, with what arguments could he convince himself? He focused on the tortured nights that he had spent in prison, on his regrets while facing the black walls in Tlatelolco, and as he felt the taste of humiliation in his mouth, he managed to find the arguments he was looking for.

He began his speech hesitantly. About the defeat of their army he didn’t say much, not to demoralize them. And about the world war, he said nothing, not to overwhelm them. He picked up energy getting into his historical account of foreign invasions and the national resistance. His enthusiasm rose together with his voice as he informed them of the events in Veracruz, and he waxed poetic talking about the defense of Clipperton. By the time he began to notice it, everybody was crying with heroic fervor.

“In honor of those who fell in the struggle against the American invaders,” he announced at the peak of his harangue, “we are going to give them the twenty-one-gun salute President Wilson wanted. But this time, damn it, we’ll be saluting our own flag. The Mexican flag!”

Cardona approached him and murmured in his ear.

“Twenty-one volleys is too much, my friend. We’ll have no powder left.”

“Well, ten then.”

“Five?”

“There will be only five blasts,” shouted Arnaud. “But with ball, so they reach Washington!”

“And even Paris!” broke in Cardona, who was not forgetting their quarrel with the French.

More or less in unison, the ten rifles fired five times. The thunder of fifty shots was heard, and the smoke from the blasts darkened the sky. Their nostrils felt the burning and their eyes smarted, partly because of the powder and partly because of emotion. All, even the women and children, ended up crying.

They are already mine, Ramón thought. He explained the possibilities and the difficulties of trying to survive on the island, the military and political significance of staying, the personal advantages of leaving, and he informed them of the offer by the captain of the Cleveland to take them back to Acapulco, together with their families.

“Whoever wishes to leave has my permission to do so,” he added last. “In these confusing circumstances, I cannot decide your fate by asking you to stay.”

He gave them some time to think about it and discuss it with their women. They dispersed. Each one joined his own family. Once in a while, someone would go from one group to another. Whispers, laughter, crying, and arguments followed. Some returned to the plaza before the call. When they were in formation, Arnaud called the roll one by one, for each man to report his decision.

“Private Rodríguez, Silverio.

Private Juárez, Dionisio.

Private Pérez, Arnulfo.

Private Mejía, Constancio.

Private Almazán, Faustino.

Private Carvajal, Pedro.

Private Alvarez, Victoriano.

Corporal Lara, Felipe.

Sergeant Irra, Agustín.

Lieutenant Cardona, Secundino.”

One by one, each man stepped forward and gave his answer. After the last one spoke, Arnaud ordered them to break ranks.

At 1650, five minutes before the appointed time, the rowboat was delivering their message to the Cleveland.

Captain Williams:

On behalf of the Mexican Army, my garrison, and myself, I thank you for the valuable assistance granted. Being in state of war, as we are, we find your attitude to be a worthy model of gentlemanly exchange between combatants. We cordially decline your offer to take us to Acapulco. My men and I, together with our wives and children, will remain here until we receive from our superiors orders to the contrary.

Signed, Captain Ramón Arnaud Vignon,

Governor of Clipperton Island,

territory of the sovereign Republic of Mexico

Clipperton, 25 June 1914.

Back on the isle, sitting on the leaning trunk of a palm tree, Arnaud still did not know whether the correct decision was to leave or to stay. But he no longer cared. Be what may, this had been the best day of his life, the day in which he had recovered his dignity and done something memorable. He was on top of the world.

He saw the Cleveland sailing away and felt sorry for Captain Williams, with his little artificial, comfortable corner, his eau de cologne, velour-covered chairs, cognac glasses; Captain Williams, backed by the easy security of his powerful ship. Ramón thought that he did not envy him — or at least, not much — because this time he, Ramón Arnaud, had been the true prince, the dandy, the tough son of a bitch. His decision to stay made him feel pleased with himself, fulfilled, big; and the loyalty of his people — Alicia, Cardona, his men — made him feel like a giant. Fortune did not offer everyone the possibility of playing for all or nothing in the ultimate showdown, of putting to the test each and every fiber in one’s body, of lying at the razor’s edge for honor and courage.

And this had happened to him. This time he, Ramón Arnaud, had measured up. He was a prince, a warrior, a show-off, a bastard. The old blemish of his desertion had been obliterated, his debt with fate had been paid, and he had finally managed to catch up with his own pride. That Havana cigar, that Flor de Lobeto, was the only thing he needed at this moment to touch heaven with his hands.

When the U.S.S. Cleveland disappeared on the horizon, Ramón Arnaud was a man at peace.

Clipperton, 1915

DURING HIS SIESTA, Ramón Arnaud had a nightmare: he dreamed that he was eating mice.

In those times there was nothing much to do in Clipperton besides trying to survive, and that left enough time to sleep. It was almost a year since the visit of the Cleveland, the last ship to come to the isle, and people had forgotten everything, even about waiting for the arrival of the ship. They accepted their condition as castaways with a Christian resignation that turned into something close to pagan hedonism as they discovered the advantages of being isolated, the special charm of solitude, and the thousand opportunities for leisure time that their situation provided.

One of them was the deep and pleasant self-absorption of a long peaceful siesta. After lunch, men, women, and children lay down on their straw mattresses or their hammocks. Everything was so quiet and silent during that first half of the afternoon that, rather than siesta time, it seemed like a second night. The bugler Carvajal had the idea of playing reveille at four in the afternoon to awaken the troops, just like he did at dawn. It helped everybody’s chronological adjustment. As a result, in twenty-four hours they lived two short days and two long nights, whereby they were awake for ten hours and asleep for fourteen.

Ramón dreamed that he was eating mice and woke up nauseated and with a bad taste in his mouth. He got up, stood in front of the broken mirror still hanging on the wall, and saw that his gums were black.

“Sadness has done this to me,” he said. “I’ve got scurvy.”

It was a fatal disease, a curse like those in the Bible, and for years Ramón had feared the day it would come to Clipperton. When people do not eat fresh fruits and vegetables for a very long time, they deprive their bodies of ascorbic acid. It was the scourge of all sailors, particularly of those shipwrecked. Ramón had learned of its devastating consequences during his obsessive readings on the subject. Vasco da Gama had left Portugal for India with five hundred men, and in less than two years, scurvy had taken half of them. Magellan also suffered from it when he spent almost four months in isolation, eating only flour, sawdust, and rats. The British Army, which was kept at seventeen hundred men during the U.S. War of Independence, lost a total of twelve hundred in action, forty-two thousand who deserted, and eighteen thousand due to scurvy.

Ramón had spent seven years trying to detect early symptoms in others, but never thought that he could be its first victim. He moved closer to the broken mirror to examine his mouth more carefully. His gums were swollen, bruised, and in the lower jaw he discovered a tiny infection.

“I have begun to rot away already,” he said, and crossed himself.

What a fine moment for the plague to hit him! Just now, when he was enjoying peace at last. Against all odds, in spite of his being abandoned, that year had been a good year. He realized it now. They had not suffered thirst. They often had periods of rain, and since the hurricane had not destroyed the cistern, they had been able to store water for times of drought. Contrary to what usually happens to castaways on deserted islands, the people in Clipperton had been threatened not by the lack of water, but by its excess when torrential downpours flooded the isle and could have easily swept them away. They had not suffered too much for lack of food. They learned to fish and to live off the sea. The food supplies Captain Williams brought had been distributed parsimoniously, which stretched them to last for several months. Ramón had been able to pay attention to cooking, which had always been one of his favorite pastimes. He perfected, to gourmet standards, some recipes like conch and crab stew with coconut milk, shrimp ceviche, and turtle stew in cuttlefish ink. He treasured a few cans of olive oil, and on special occasions he would beat in some egg yolks for making mayonnaise to serve with lobster.

When they ran out of kerosene, used to light the lamps and the lighthouse, the fuel came to them miraculously from heaven — rather, from the sea — in the form of a dead whale dragged in by the tide to rest in peace on the Clipperton beach. They explored and quartered the enormous sea creature, and it yielded leather, meat, and several barrels of some dark oil, thick and smelly, that burned bright with a delicate golden flame.

It had been also a time of revelation in which Ramón learned to be a father. He discovered his children: for the first time in his life he became fully aware of the existence of those three creatures who were growing up freely and unencumbered in adversity as if it were one more element in nature. He spent whole days with them exploring the island, climbing the southern rock, or teaching them how to swim. With fine woods from the Nokomis and the Kinkora, he made them miniature ships that looked like the real ones. They took them to the lagoon, and by nightfall they were still sailing them. He taught them how to identify stars in the sky, and the different kinds of breezes, and when his children got quickly bored listening to him, he would silently watch them play.

At dusk Ramón, Alicia, Tirsa, and Cardona gathered to keep one another company during that difficult hour on the island when darkness seemed to swallow everything very fast.

“If at least I still had my mandolin,” lamented Arnaud.

“That’s the last thing we need,” countered Alicia.

“Please, Secundino, sing!” pleaded Tirsa.

“I can’t anymore. The salty air has dried up my voice.”

The four kept together so each one would not feel so alone, though they were not able to see one another’s faces and often repeated the same exchanges. Not to be overwhelmed by the enveloping darkness, they tightened the circle of friendship that had been put to all kinds of tests, from the petty annoyances of daily life to great catastrophic upheavals.

Of course they missed Mexico and their families, but as time went on, their nostalgia became more abstract and diffused. Eventually, the most persistent of memories dropped off like ripened fruit drops from trees, and vanished. Ramón had a period in which he talked of nothing else but his mother’s virtues. The desserts she used to bake for him, the stories she told him, the wonderful massages she gave him to relax his back muscles. When he noticed that this topic was boring to other people, he went through a period in which he read and reread her letters. Then he wrote poems about his filial love, like this poem recovered by General Urquizo in his biography of the Arnauds.

She was the old lady whose gaze

gave me the greatest joy,

like a virgin full of grace,

completely adored by her boy.

His obsession went so far that Alicia stopped calling him by his given name. “This is for Doña Carlota’s son,” she would say. “Here comes Doña Carlota’s son.” Until one night, when they were already in bed, they heard a noise, and Ramón got up to check through the empty house. After a while he returned to bed.

“It was Mother,” he announced. “She was in the kitchen.”

“What are you saying?”

“That it was Mother, I’m telling you.”

“Ramón, you’re crazy.”

“No, it’s not that, it’s that she is dead. She died yesterday, and she came to tell me.”

And he never mentioned her again.

That was how the preceding year had gone, without any big highs or lows. In spite of their countless needs, Ramón and Alicia were practically contented, almost happy.

Until scurvy appeared. In the past, Ramón’s hypochondria had made him think of his own death hundreds of times. He would torture himself in anticipation and imagine its cruelest forms. He barely kept secret his phobias of fire and of water. He felt a faint premonition that he would end up burned alive or drowned. But never, not even in his worst moments of self-pity, did he think he would die for lack of a lemon. My kingdom for a lemon, he kept thinking.

His body had resented the lack of vegetables. Lemon juice was all that he lacked in order to recover his health; a few bitter drops, a caustic cleansing that could burn the decay already existing inside his body, which in no time would show in every pore. Ramón lay back on his bed and began to murmur, like in a litany, first in a low voice and then in a crescendo:

“Lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit. Lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit! Lemons, limes, oranges, Brussels sprouts, watercress, green peppers, blackberries, radishes, and parsley! A lot of radishes and a lot of parsley! Beets, mushrooms, plums, tomatoes, coconuts. .. Coconut, coconut, coconut, coconut!”

Coconut they had plenty of. It was the only food from the vegetable kingdom that the island produced after the garden soil had been swept away. Coconut would be his salvation, the indispensable source of ascorbic acid that could prevent his death. Possibly prevent the death of all the inhabitants of the isle.

He put on a threadbare pair of pants and a poncho the women had patched together out of pieces of sailcloth. He climbed on a raft and rowed across the lagoon in a straight line. He landed where the thirteen coconut palms were. Until then, anyone who wanted to have some coconut needed only to go there. Coconuts were always in abundance, like the fish or the crabs, and one needed only to reach out and grab them.

Ramón took the ones on the ground to the raft. He figured that even in the sorry state of these palm trees, they could still produce about five coconuts a week, which could be painstakingly distributed equally among the twenty-one adults and nine children. He looked for Sergeant Irra and gave him quite an unexpected but peremptory order.

“Sergeant, from now on the palm trees are your responsibility. Make sure they are guarded day and night. Make sure nobody touches the coconuts. If there is one missing, I’ll hold you responsible.”

He walked away, sat on a rock, opened one with a machete, and drank its milk. During the following two days he tried to control the swelling of his gums with frequent dabs of iodine. However, the swelling increased to the point that he was unable to eat. He did not want to disclose his predicament to anyone, but Alicia discovered it.

“What did you eat that gives you such foul breath?”

He had to tell her the truth. They agreed to keep it secret, so as not to alarm the other people. They isolated themselves in concerted effort to heal the increasing ulcerations in his mouth by cleansing them with some antiseptics left in the pharmacy — methylene blue, gentian violet, iodine, hydrogen peroxide — one at a time, or all mixed into a disgusting, viscous concoction. Since Ramón was not able to chew his food, Alicia mashed the fish and pounded the coconut meat for him. In one week they were able to see some progress.

“I thought that this sickness had no cure, but our plan seems to be working,” Ramón said, without daring yet to declare it a miracle cure.

“God willing.”

Either God was willing or the coconut remedy did it, but Ramón recuperated. They went back to their disciplined routine as if nothing had happened, but keeping a tight control over the coconuts, several dozen of which they stored under lock and key. And they renewed their gatherings at dusk with Tirsa and Cardona.

“Victoriano is rebelling again,” the lieutenant’s voice resounded in the dark.

“Is he again agitating the people?”

“No, the trouble now is that he is doing nothing. Does not even light the lantern in the lighthouse. I had to put Pedrito Carvajal in charge of that, because the man refuses to get up from his hammock. Threats don’t work. He says we can shoot him if we want to, but right there, lying in his hammock. He does not want to get up.”

“Is he sick?” Alicia inquired.

“He doesn’t seem to be. It just seems to be lethargy.”

The two men walked up to the lighthouse cave to see Victoriano. As soon as Arnaud came in, he recognized the smell: it was the same putrid smell of his own body a few days ago. It was pitch black inside. Arnaud groped the walls to get a sense of where he was going, and found them moist. They were permeated with the unhealthy vapors of the disease.

“Victoriano?”

“Yessir.”

“It’s me, Arnaud.”

“At your service, Captain.”

His knees bumped against the hammock, which hung on the diagonal. There was his man.

“My whole body aches,” they heard him say. “I think rheumatism got me. It got even my teeth, because they are falling out.”

Ramón did not need to see him. He heard his hard breathing and could easily imagine the bruises on his skin and the ulcerations in his mouth. He returned at dawn to apply medications and feed him some coconut mush. He also asked Sergeant Irra’s wife to look after him.

Victoriano Alvarez moaned all day, screamed all night, and in the morning he looked like a martyr. His skin was covered with ulcers, as if somebody had beaten him to a pulp. His gums were bleeding, and his mouth was all infected with boils. The news spread all over the island. People came to the lighthouse to see him and gathered at the door of his cabin, their eyes fixed on him. The children sneaked in and circled around his hammock.

A few days later, Ramón summoned his people in front of the room that had been the pharmacy and made them parade in their skivvies to check them out. He found the tell-tale signs on a woman. She was Irra’s companion, the one who had been taking care of Victoriano.

The rumor spread like wildfire that this was a contagious epidemic and that it would infect anyone who came near Victoriano Alvarez. Arnaud did everything possible to stop the confusion. He ordered some community meetings and explained the characteristics of the disease, its causes and symptoms. He seemed never to tire of saying that it wasn’t catching, and using a stick, even scratched out on the ground crude human figures to explain the body’s systemic functions and failures. Despite all his efforts, he could not convince anyone. People did not want to hear anything about “scurvy” and preferred to keep calling it “the plague.” The plague, they said, pronouncing the word with more fatalism than hope for a cure. They also refused to believe the citrus story. The disease was contagious, and that was the only truth they were willing to accept. Besides, they needed a more believable culprit than a perfectly innocent looking orange or lemon.

In its secret path, before it became full-blown, the disease altered body humors — fermenting blood, souring bile, poisoning mucus — and brought forth dark passions, and Victoriano Alvarez became the scapegoat. They came to hate him from the bottom of their hearts: they cursed him for being black and for being contagious, demanding that he be isolated and placed in quarantine. Nobody wanted to take care of him. Or even to get close to the big rock, or to turn on the beam in the lighthouse. Ramón agreed to isolate him, in part so as not to agitate the crowd even more, in part for fear they would end up by lynching their chosen victim.

During the days that followed, many people began to look yellowish, like Asians, and suffered attacks of rash and rancorous apathy that made it difficult to get them to do anything or to follow any discipline. Ramón knew how to interpret this: as the first signs of the disease that was spreading to everybody. He devoted himself, together with Cardona, to rebuilding the pharmacy. He inventoried the few medications left, had the women wash and boil rags, and in the depository that had once been ransacked by The Hand That Strangles, he continued storing coconuts, after he fixed some locks and bolts. He had everybody receive a coconut ration together with their daily food.

Scurvy spread with implacable speed anyway, and rashes, sores, brown spots, and hematomas proliferated. Women and children were less affected; the disease attacked the men with particular virulence.

The sickly coconut palms could not produce enough, and the portions of coconut were reduced to ridiculous amounts. Ramón ordered the pulp to be grated and mixed with fish, and the coconut milk extended with rainwater. But even so, the remedy was not enough. In desperation, Tirsa Rendón thought of using the shells also. They tried to boil them in a big pot and prepared an infusion that they started to distribute in their pewter bowls, a ladleful at a time. Since the taste was awful, people refused to drink it, and Ramón made it compulsory to have it under threat of punishment.

The soldiers thought he had lost his wits.

“Our good Captain Arnaud blames everything on the oranges and wants to stop us from dying with coconut milk!” Since no one wanted to take care of the agonizing Victoriano, Alicia, who was still healthy, volunteered to do it. He was in a sorrowful state. His body emitted a putrid odor, his sores were oozing, and he could not get up from the hammock even to relieve himself. Making a big effort and trying to control her nausea, she fed him and tried to alleviate his suffering as best she could. Once, during wash time, she lifted the dirty serape that covered him. His body was naked, emaciated, and ghostly, but between his legs, in full erection and apparently in good health, Alicia saw his large-sized member. She was stunned. She let go of the serape and searched his face as if expecting an explanation. His eyes were gazing at her without shame, with some amusement, in fact. For a moment she felt paralyzed, then stepped back. Victoriano grabbed her hand, but she escaped and ran away as if Lucifer himself had touched her. She did not stop running until she met Ramón in the infirmary, on the other side of the island.

“I’m not taking care of Victoriano anymore,” she announced, still breathless from her moment of panic and her racing away from it. “It’s a man’s job.”

“Why?”

She did not dare tell the truth.

“Because he is too heavy and I cannot handle him.”

Alicia never went back to the lighthouse lair, and with so many sick people to take care of, Ramón completely forgot about Victoriano Alvarez. The soldier was left forsaken in his cave, dreaming of revenge while seeing his body rot away, piece by piece.

But the scurvy continued spreading around. The ulcerated sores and bursting boils increased, and some of the infections were so bad as to be swarming with worms. The antiseptics ran out, and Ramón had to resort to drastic old ways. With cold-blooded Tirsa Rendón as his assistant, he filled the wounds with gunpowder, added a wick, and let them burn out.

The rainy season came suddenly, and the deluge seemed like the sky wanted to wash away the miasmas from the plague. The floods forced people to disband. The sick became isolated, with only their own horror to face.

On one stormy dawn, someone knocked at the Arnauds’ home. Alicia got up to open the door and met face to face with a monster. It took her a while to realize it was Irra’s wife. She had lost all her teeth, and her face was purple and disfigured. Her gums were swollen beyond any possible imagining. From the opening gap that was now her mouth came a rancid odor that Alicia recognized: it was the odor of death.

“I came to ask you where I can bury my two children,” she mumbled. “They died last night.”

The burial was scheduled for that afternoon, next to Jesús Neri’s grave, Clipperton’s first fatality, the old soldier who was attacked by sharks. But Irra’s wife died before then. They placed her body in the same box with her two children, and a sad procession dragged along under the downpour, all the way to the cemetery by the southern rock, with the makeshift coffin on their shoulders. Their heads were bent, and they avoided looking at one another: it was too hard to see their own disaster reflected in the others’ faces. There was no ceremony, either religious or military. They did not have the strength. Whatever strength they had left was spent by the sick in keeping themselves on their feet, and by the healthy in digging into the rock, the rain pounding on their backs.

The dead disappeared underground, and the living scattered in the storm. Only a small group of men stayed by the grave, keeping company with Sergeant Irra, who had just buried his whole family. Without a word, they knew what they wanted to do. They walked slowly toward the lighthouse lair, all with a single aim, a single will. They found Victoriano lying in his hammock, still alive, and bludgeoned him until they felt he was dead. “We did the right thing,” they wrote on the earth floor of the cabin.

Doña Juana the midwife, Jesús Neri’s widow, had become an ill-tempered, mad loner. She had no home — nobody remembered whether her house had collapsed or had been blown away by the hurricane or dragged off by the floods — and she wandered around with her belongings on her back. Life in the open had shrunk, wrinkled, and darkened her skin like a raisin. During the day she kept mumbling, and at night she lulled herself to sleep as if she were her own child. The others forgot about her and would greet her only in passing, “Morning, Doña Juana,” or “Good morning, Doña Juana.”

“What’s ‘good’ about it?” she would mumble, though nobody paid attention. “There are only bad ones and worse ones.”

When the scurvy condition worsened, they remembered her.

“The midwife could help us with our sores!”

They looked for her by the lagoon, under the pile of rubble and garbage where she had taken refuge, and she came out dressed in rags. She stood on a mound of rocks and spoke about the devil. Clipperton was living in sin, “like Sodom and Gomorrah,” she preached, “and the plague was God’s punishment. Men and women were living together without the sacred sanction, and the children were growing up without being baptized.” She would take care of them, she promised, provided they first achieved peace with their consciences. It was easy for her to convince them. She conducted marriage ceremonies, blessing the pathetic brides and grooms ravished by disease. She held communal baptisms, making the little ones go into the rotten waters of the lagoon up to their knees. Her regalia as priestess for these occasions was really striking. To the various rags, she added pelts from dead animals, and on her head she wore an old lamp shade decorated with tassels all around. At one end of a long stick, which she used as a bishop’s crosier, she had attached a porcelain doll.

Notwithstanding their repentance, their prayers and sacraments, the faithful continued to writhe in pain. The midwife then complemented her mysticism with medicine. She prepared infusions with turkey feathers, sea urchin shells, bat pee, and toad milk. She applied leeches, vents, and guano poultices. The sick stopped going to the pharmacy for their daily ration of coconut, and established themselves at the shore of the lagoon, all around the midwife’s hovel. Their days and nights were divided either between moans and agonies, or prayers and processions.

The death toll kept increasing, and the living became impatient waiting for a miracle cure. The midwife expanded her gospel repertoire. She told them that there was poison in the air, and ordered people to light bonfires to cleanse it and to feed the fires with the belongings of those who died. So, into this purifying fire went scapulars, combs, petticoats, shirts, love letters, toys: the last remaining family memories, the few friendly objects that were left, minute traces of a bygone world.

But nobody was getting better; they all got worse. Their skin fell off in scales, and their flesh was raw. With their lowered defenses, other diseases took hold: anemia, rheumatic fever, bronchitis, leukemia, diarrhea, depression.

The faithful were losing patience.

“You lying hag, if you don’t cure us, we’ll throw you into the lagoon,” the people shouted at her one day in the middle of one of her rituals.

Then she demanded sacrifices. She said that the sins had been so numerous that only blood could wash them away. Dutifully, they threw into the fire a whole litter of newborn piglets. A new brotherhood of flagellants was formed, and they went around the island flailing their backs.

The flagellants, led by Sergeant Irra, punished themselves and everything around them. Weak and in pain, they were nonetheless a pitiful horde of hooligans and predators. Their emblem was to carry a handful of hair that each had pulled out from someone’s corpse; their slogan, “Long Live Death”; and their hymn, the “Salve Regina, Empress of Heaven.” Using the same whips and heavy sticks with which they mortified their flesh, they killed all the animals and destroyed all structures and water tanks, as well as ransacked the food depot. They would have cut down the palm trees with their machetes, had Arnaud and Cardona’s gunshots not prevented them.

As long as Ramón was in control, burials were made in the cemetery. But when Clipperton became a no-man’s-land, each one dug a hole for his dead wherever he could. The island was dotted with graves. Sometimes — though not often — their presence was indicated by a wooden cross or a heap of stones. At the end, when the living were fewer than the dead, and the presence of death became overwhelming, they threw the corpses into the lagoon or into the sea.

Arnaud’s authority had collapsed. He and his military orders and coconut milk could not compete with Doña Juana’s magical, mystical influence. In one last attempt to bring this pandemonium to some semblance of order, he walked to the lagoon with the clear intention of confronting the old woman.

“You are no priestess, and no doctor. You’re nothing!” he shouted in the presence of her followers. “You’re nothing but a deranged old woman, and I forbid you to keep on driving these people mad.”

“You are not in charge anymore, Arnaud,” she countered. “And neither am I. This is the reign of death. Go and die in peace, and let others die the way they want to.”

Ramón walked away from the place without a word, and resolved to keep to himself at home with his family, Altagracia, Tirsa, Cardona, three widows, and one orphan. The isle became two domains — the midwife’s colony and the Arnaud home — that had less and less contact with each other, each side finally ignoring the other as if they were an ocean apart.

Those who stayed in the house organized a guard duty day and night to prevent an attack from the flagellants, and, against all hopes, they kept eating coconut and drinking an infusion made with the shells. Not even Arnaud did it out of conviction. For him this irrational gesture only embodied the remnants of his will to live.

Though the curtain of water falling from the skies did not abate, some signs from the other side were perceived. Laments from those dying, smoke from the bonfires, hymns from the flagellants. At night the sounds became weaker, more surreal, like voices from the other world that were growing fainter. Like the echoes from a nightmare when one is about to wake up.

Then the rains suddenly stopped. The sky changed colors, like a snake changes skins, and the color it finally acquired was a limpid, innocent blue. The Arnauds and their three children, the Cardonas, and the rest of those in the house were still alive. Besides, they were healthy. They were the only survivors on Clipperton Island.

“Blessed are the holy coconuts,” Ramón said, and went out with his children to the beach to welcome the sunshine.

Clipperton, 1915

“SECUNDINO, A SHIP is going by!” shouted Ramón Arnaud one quiet, gray morning.

Everything seemed to be at peace, except for the ocean. In between the lazy stillness of the sky and that of the land, the sea in frantic waves exploded on the reefs.

Ramón Arnaud and Secundino Cardona had been sitting on the beach for hours, just killing time. The smell of death still lingered and reached them once in a while, but they did not notice. They had become inured to having their noses tickled by mellow, rotten scents, and no longer remembered the smell of pure air. A few weeks before, when the rains stopped, they had ventured to the midwife’s hill and found only corpses. Together they piled them up and set them on fire. They killed a few pigs that had been eating here and there and burned them also. They did not want to eat animals that had eaten human flesh. Then they left that place, never to return.

Death had made the island a profane, polluted wasteland, and the survivors stayed around the Arnaud home, the only clean spot. They even forgot about the lighthouse, for they did not want to go there. They only ventured far from the house once a day to collect coconuts. Whatever else was left, they had close by, and they still had the habit of keeping together in a compact group, as if anyone who strayed would be exposed to greater perils than the rest. As if the spirit of the plague, or of impending disaster, were still around. They were alive but had felt death too close, and that had left its mark. They turned fearful and superstitious, and in their minds they found room for the god they had worshiped in another time. The one and only god, all powerful, magnificent, beginning and end of everything: a ship that would rescue them.

Relaxing on the beach by the house, Arnaud and Cardona were playing with pebbles. When the waves receded, so fast that for a moment they left a smooth film of water, they were casting pebbles horizontally so that they would skip on the surface several times. Cardona always won. His stones would rebound four and five times; Arnaud’s, only two or three.

“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!”