Isle of Passion (22 page)

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.

O
N
J
UNE
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.