The Island of Last Truth (10 page)

Prendel looks at Nelson with horror and says: “So easy. A clean job, indeed.”

“Life is hard, doctor. And when one sees he is approaching the end, sometimes he takes drastic measures.” Nelson takes a gulp from his cup of whisky. He finishes it and pours himself more.

Prendel follows his example and asks Souza to finish telling him the story. He figures Souza has lowered his guard, he knows that he is no longer a threat, that the only thing he wants is to leave the island and now that he has admitted it, he has nothing to fear now.

“Gerardo thought about returning to the island one way or another. Precisely because he didn't know how or with whom, he'd left a full survival kit. A little before the attack on the
Queen,
the old cook had come down with a fever. Malaria. At times he was delirious. The doctor said he wasn't going to make it.”

Souza told the story to the end. Prendel listened to him as if, in fact, he was narrating a fictional adventure.

When the
Solimán
attacked Dr. Prendel's boat, Gerardo, plagued by the threat of death, had already told the whole story to Souza. He didn't tell him, however, where he'd hidden the loot, maybe because he thought keeping the secret was the only way of making sure Souza would try to keep him alive.

Souza had decided that he wouldn't leave the island without the diamonds. It was a matter of a real fortune. Enough for numerous men to live numerous lives of real luxury.

“To compensate you, I'll give you some.” And he throws him one of the bags.

Prendel can't believe it; he's speechless. Souza could have taken much longer to find the diamonds, years perhaps. It could have been a cook's delirium. Others could have found them before Souza got to the island. They could have spent the rest of their lives there alone because this man had the stupid ambition of making himself rich. He is furious and explodes. He screams at him, insults him, feels deceived, cheated, mocked. He throws the bag of diamonds in Souza's face.

“You seriously think a fistful of diamonds is important enough to hold someone prisoner?”

“It's what makes the world go round, let's not kid ourselves.”

“Other things make the world go round. You wanted to escape the pirates because you think you're different. Don't deceive yourself, you're even worse.”

Souza stands up. Prendel had done so a moment before. The men's silhouettes stand out against the darkness, illuminated by the firelight. Nelson adjusts the two weapons at his disposal on his belt. Prendel takes a step back. He assesses his situation: he cannot confront Nelson just now. He keeps quiet.

“You're making a mistake,” Souza says to him. “You'll see you're making a mistake.” He stretches, yawns, rubs his face with both hands. “We should rest a little.”

At that moment, Prendel realizes it is very likely that Nelson may try to kill him before daybreak. If not, why has he told him the story, and, even worse, been ready to share his fortune with him? Prendel knows that diagnoses are made based on symptoms and there is no doubt that these are very clear.

Dr. Prendel is a victim of terror. He doesn't want to leave Nelson alone, because he is afraid he will set sail without him, but neither does he want to stay at his side, because he's afraid of going to sleep and never waking up again.

The two men move a few meters apart. Both are thin, bearded, bare chested. They look alike. Each one prepares his place to spend the night. Prendel stays seated with his back against a rock. He smokes a last cigarette. He knows he should sleep, that he needs to rest because, in the best of cases, days of hard, exhausting sailing await him, in the company of a stranger who he cannot or doesn't want to trust, but he can't close his eyes. And it is strange that he can't, because if he has learned anything from sailing alone it is how to fall asleep quickly, anywhere, and for short bursts.

He looks at the other man, still awake, and it all seems monstrously natural. Perhaps it was the whisky, which has made them a little too relaxed.

He raises his head and recognizes the stars. Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix. Sirius, Aldebaran. The seven sisters. And Castor and Pollux. He has always liked the names of the stars. And by guiding himself more by the stars than the compass. Despite having to change the guiding star every so often, as the situation developed and changed. I will not see them from this island any more, he thinks without nostalgia. In a few days all this will all be over and he will be another man.

And this is the point I wanted to get to, Phoebe,” Dr. Prendel confessed while we were moving with a tailwind towards the port. “You will forgive my circling around it for so long. You probably think I am a monster. But you must understand me. You must understand me. Only you can. I know I should have killed myself the following day, Dr. Westore. I wasn't capable of trusting that man. I betrayed all of my principles. I wasn't capable of respecting human life. And I'm not going to deny it: it wasn't only fear that I felt; the diamonds also clouded my mind. I figured that, like me, the other man would try to spend the night awake. By the early morning however, I saw that sleep had overtaken him and he was sleeping deeply. I don't remember if I had a moment's doubt or if the impulse won me immediately. I rose and, little by little, I moved closer to him. Once at his side, I grabbed a weapon with a quick violent movement and I shot him once, decisively. I shot him again, and this time I think he died. He went to sleep with the idea that the next day we would set sail and we would be equal, both of us impossible survivors. I am equally tortured by the idea of having killed him as that of having left him badly injured. Can you imagine?

Moments after the shooting I was already in the lifeboat, rowing out to sea, with my heart thumping from the two things I'd just done: killed a man and saved myself.

Would you be able to forgive me? I have tried all these years in vain.

It wasn't until many miles later I found his letter. To be precise, his letters. One in English, addressed to me. Another in Portuguese, for his family in Lisbon. The one for his family I am giving to you now, Dr. Westore, so you can get it there. It took me a while to read it; I did so when I met someone who could translate it for me. Everything he'd told me was true. His adventurous spirit, his parents' grocery store, his siblings, his love for Cecilia, that sort of kidnapping the pirates had subjected him to, and his desire to escape, the cook's information. Souza wasn't lying. He was an honest man. Any lie of his would perhaps have made my betrayal more bearable. It is important that you get in contact with his family. Although it may be late, they have to know that their son, their brother is dead. It is a debt I owe them, do you understand?

I destroyed the letter addressed to me. I threw it into the sea instantly, as though it might burn my fingers. He said I would only have found the letter if I had killed him. And if I had killed him, he asked me to make sure the other missive got to his family and he felt sorry for me, because I would never find a way of leaving that island.

And so it was, Dr. Westore. I am still there, trying every day, to take back what I did. How irreparable is death and how different a man is after killing. How well have I seen it. I am happy that the end is coming for me, dear Phoebe, because it will be the only way of ending the guilt.

You must excuse me for not having told you before. But of what would a man like me not be capable? I have despised myself all the days of my life since I climbed into the boat. I've wanted to convince myself that the other man would have killed me on the way, that he would not have been capable of sharing the diamonds with me and even less the scarce food and water for so many days as we might have needed before finding salvation. In vain. He was a real man. He would not have killed me, but I killed him to prevent him from doing so.

The diamonds. Most of them are still in my possession. He was right. There are enough of them for many men to live many lives. They are for you.

I have lived all these years with this secret, but I cannot die with it. Publish my story with names and surnames, Dr. Westore. And know that if I ask you this, it is so as to die peacefully, no more. I am a wretch and I think that perhaps this confession will serve in part to expiate my guilt.”

EPILOGUE

I stayed with Dr. Prendel until he died without questioning what opinion someone capable of killing like that, in cold blood, deserved from me. My grandfather would have said: “You can't trust a man who sails alone. Would you trust an animal who isolates itself from the herd?”

Afterwards I requested a leave of absence to go to Lisbon. It wasn't part of the promise, but the letter of the doctor's victim troubled me and I needed to meet the Souzas. I wasn't doing it for Prendel, I was doing it for myself. Perhaps to understand why a man is capable of doing what the doctor had done, how a person is capable of transforming themselves to this extreme.

Now that I am here, I have finished writing what Mathew told me, and I am about to meet Nelson's family, my strength falters. Do I have to tell them that their son is dead? Should I give them an old, faraway letter, written by someone who has not existed for so long? I'm so filled with doubt that I leave the hotel, take a taxi, and give the address, still not knowing what I am going to say. I am carrying, indeed, the letter in my bag, as if my bag were the bottle a hopeful shipwreck throws into the sea. I have read it more than once: “Dear parents and siblings, if this letter reaches your hands, whenever it may come and whoever brings it to you, he will want to say that a short time ago I died . . . ” Poor Nelson, he thought that a man capable of killing him would have the decency to act as messenger.

It wasn't too difficult to locate the Souzas. The directions Nelson had given Mathew were enough. The family agreed to receive me because, when I contacted them by telephone from New York, I told them I had news of their missing son and I preferred to give it to them in person. Luckily, I had studied Portuguese in university and although it was rusty, I could manage.

I arrive at the Souzas' house. A woman of approximately my age who must be Lidia, Nelson's sister, opens the door to me. And yes, she is Lidia, because she tells me so right away, as she leads the way to the sitting room. A small room, full of furniture covered in shiny, imitationwood Formica. It is midday, but as it is hot, they have the blind half-lowered so there is a kind of semi-darkness. They ask me to sit down at the table, covered with an oilcloth stamped with drawings of coffee pots, cups, cutlery, and all sorts of kitchen utensils. I lean on it and my sweaty arms stick to the plastic. When I raise them, embarrassed, it rises a little. They serve me a glass of red wine and some cheese tacos. They sit around me, except Miguel, the brother, who remains standing. The mother watches me anxiously. She doesn't dare ask. Her son has been dead for years, she thinks. She hasn't heard anything about him for almost twenty years. They have tried everything. They've always failed. The earth has swallowed him up. Or the sea.

“Nelson was an adventurer,” says the father, and he speaks in the past tense. He has discovered in my expression that his suspicions are not unfounded. “Nelson wasn't like his siblings; he needed to fly.” And he breathes deeply, as if in place of air he seeks comfort. “He went to Saint Helena; he called it the prison island. And you see it was a prison, he never came back. He had a girlfriend there. She never heard from him again either. His shipmates told her he was lost at sea during a storm.”

I understand that when he speaks of Nelson's shipmates he is referring, and I don't think he is aware of it, to the pirates.

The mother, naturally, cries. How many times must she have cried without realizing it, while she made a meal, or the beds, or did the laundry. As though she were coughing or sneezing. Her children don't look at her. Her husband, on the other hand, moves a hand closer to her and she takes it as if he were passing her the salt or the bread, in any case something that she has asked for because she needs it.

When I am about to speak, to open the bag and give them the letter, the mother suddenly rises and disappears; we hear the sounds of drawers being opened and closed and after a while, she returns with a photograph album. She sits down with an awkward movement, moves her chair closer to mine, dragging it, opens the album, searches and finally finds the place where she wanted to be. She shows me a photo. She moves the glass of wine, which I haven't touched, to see it. Miguel says:

“That's Nelson, just before he went to Saint Helena.”

I look, and what I see takes my breath away, because the person appearing in the photograph they are showing me is Dr. Prendel alone, young, smiling, with that characteristic expression of his, the expression that came over his mouth every time he was up to one of his old tricks.

I drink the entire glass of wine in one gulp. I look at the photograph again. The silence surrounding me is like the silence streaming through me.

I hear Miguel, still standing, ask me:

“And how did you know my brother?”

I think quickly. I remember what my grandfather used to say: “Little one, one lie always leads to another; it's better to tell the truth from the beginning.” But now I am the one with a secret and I want to keep it to myself. Did I know Nelson Souza? I am aware that everyone is waiting for an answer. And the impulse comes on its own, and I give myself up to it as I bury the letter in the bottom of my bag. I say:

“I am the widow of the only man who came to really know him. It is a long story.” And I realize I will have to invent it, rewrite his life while I speak.

The mother rises, says:

“You'll stay for lunch, of course.” And she asks Lidia to put on the floral tablecloth and Miguel to go down and get nice wine and dessert. And turning to me she clarifies, “We used to have a grocery store but not now. We're retired.”