Isle of Passion (20 page)

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.”

T
HINKING ABOUT
T
IRSA
R
ENDÓN
, 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.”

“T
HEY 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.