Isle of Passion (27 page)

“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.

“S
ECUNDINO, 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!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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