The Island of the Day Before (27 page)

Roberto said: "The Knight mentioned this unguentum armarium as if it were some useful cure, but you lead us to believe that it could also be used to do harm."

"Indeed, and that is why certain secrets should be kept from the plebs, so that they are not put to evil use. Ah, dear sir, the debate over what we English call the Weapon Salve is full of controversy. The Knight spoke to us of a weapon that, suitably treated, brings relief to the wound. But take the same weapon and place it by a fire, and the wounded man, even if miles away, will scream with pain. And if you immerse the blade still stained with blood into icy water, the victim will be seized with a fit of shivering."

This conversation told Roberto nothing he did not already know, except that Dr. Byrd knew a great deal about the Powder of Sympathy. And yet the doctor's talk had dwelt largely on the worst effects of the powder, and this could not be mere chance. The connection between all this and the arc of the meridian, however, was another story.

Finally one morning, taking advantage of a sailor's bad fall from a yardarm, which fractured his skull, while there was great confusion on the deck and the doctor was summoned to treat the unfortunate man, Roberto slipped down into the hold.

Almost groping, he managed to find the right path. Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps the animal was whimpering more than usual that morning: Roberto, more or less at the point where later on the
Daphne
he would find the kegs of aqua vitae, was confronted by a horrid sight.

Well shielded from curious eyes, in an enclosure made to his measure, on a bed of rags, lay a dog.

He was perhaps of good breed, but his suffering and hunger had reduced him to mere skin and bones. And yet his tormentors showed their intention to keep him alive: they had provided him with abundant food and water, including food surely not canine, subtracted from the passengers' rations.

He was lying on one side, head limp, tongue lolling. On that exposed side gaped a broad and horrible wound. At once fresh and gangrenous, it revealed a pair of great pinkish lips, and in the center, as along the entire gash, was a purulent secretion resembling whey. Roberto realized that the wound looked as it did because the hand of a chirurgeon, rather than sew the lips together, had deliberately kept them parted and open, attaching them to the outer hide.

Bastard offspring of the medical art, that wound had not only been inflicted but wickedly treated so it would not form a scar and the dog would continue suffering—who knows for how long. Further, Roberto saw in and around the wound a crystalline residue, as if a doctor (yes, a doctor, so cruelly expert!) every day sprinkled an irritant salt there.

Helpless, Roberto stroked the wretch, now whimpering softly. He asked himself what he could do to help, but at a heavier touch, the dog's suffering increased. Moreover, Roberto's own pity was giving way to a sense of victory. There was no doubt: this was Dr. Byrd's secret, the mysterious cargo taken aboard in London.

From what Roberto had seen, from what a man with his knowledge could infer, the dog had been wounded in England, and Byrd was making sure he would remain wounded. Someone in London, every day at the same, agreed hour, did something to the guilty weapon, or to a cloth steeped in the animal's blood, provoking a reaction, perhaps of relief, but perhaps of still greater pain, for Dr. Byrd himself had said that the Weapon Salve could also harm.

Thus on the
Amaryllis
they could know at a given moment what time it was in Europe. And knowing the hour of their transitory position, they were able to calculate the meridian!

The only thing to do was obtain proof. At that period Byrd would always leave at around eleven: so they were nearing the antimeridian. Roberto would await him, hidden near the dog, at about that hour.

He was fortunate, if fortune can be associated with the unfortunate chance that would lead that ship, and all those aboard it, to the nadir of misfortune. That afternoon the sea was rough, and so Roberto could convincingly complain of nausea and stomach upset, and seek his bed, deserting the supper table. At first dark, when nobody yet thought of setting up the watch, he slipped furtively into the hold, carrying only a flint and a tarred rope to light his way. He reached the dog and saw, above his bed, a platform laden with bales of straw used to replace the infested pallets of the passengers. He picked his way through these bales and made himself a niche, from whence he could not see the dog but could see anyone standing beside him, and could certainly overhear all speech.

The waiting lasted hours, made longer by the moans of the hapless creature, but finally he heard other sounds and discerned lights.

A little later, he found himself witnessing an experiment taking place only a few steps from him, in the presence of the doctor and his three assistants.

"Are you taking notes, Cavendish?"

"Aye, aye, doctor."

"We will wait then. He is whining too much this evening."

"It is the sea."

"Good dog, good old Hakluyt," the doctor said, calming the animal with some hypocrite petting. "It was a mistake not to establish a set sequence of actions. We should always begin with the lenitive."

"Not necessarily, doctor. Some evenings he is asleep at the proper hour and has to be wakened with an irritant."

"Careful ... he seems to be stirring.... Good dog, Hakluyt ... Yes, he's upset!" The dog was emitting unnatural yelps. "They have exposed the weapon to the fire. Are you recording the time, Withrington?"

"It is almost half eleven."

"Look at the clocks. About ten minutes should go by."

The dog continued howling for an interminable time. Then he made a different sound, which after an arf arf grew gradually weaker until it was replaced by silence.

"Good," Dr. Byrd was saying. "Now what time is it, Withrington?"

"It should correspond. A quarter before midnight."

"We cannot cry victory yet. We must wait for the control."

Another interminable wait, and then the dog, who had apparently dozed off with relief, yowled again, as if someone had stamped on his tail.

"Time, Withrington?"

"The hour is past. Only a few grains of sand are left."

"The clock already says midnight," a third voice announced.

"That seems enough to me. Now, gentlemen," Dr. Byrd said, "I hope they stop the irritation at once. Poor Hakluyt cannot bear it. Water and salt, Hawlse, and the cloth. Good dog, Hakluyt, now you're better.... Sleep ... listen to your master ... it's over.... Hawlse, the sleeping draught in the water."

"Aye, aye, doctor."

"There, drink this, Hakluyt.... Good boy, yes ... drink the nice water...." A timid little whine, then again silence.

"Excellent, gentlemen," Dr. Byrd was saying. "If this cursed ship did not toss so indecently, we might say we have had a good evening. Tomorrow morning, Hawlse, salt on the wound, as usual. Let us sum up, gentlemen. At the crucial moment, here we were close to midnight, and from London they signaled us that it was noon. We are on the antimeridian of London, and therefore on the one-hundred-ninetieth of the Canaries. If the Islands of Solomon, as tradition has it, are on the antimeridian of the Isla de Hierro, and if we are at the correct latitude, sailing towards the west with a following wind, we should land at San Cristoval, or however we choose to rebaptize that ghastly island. We will have found what the Spaniards have been seeking for decades, and at the same time we will hold in our hand the secret of the
Punto Fijo.
Beer, Cavendish, we must drink a toast to His Majesty, may God keep him always!"

"God save the King!" the three said in one voice—and all four were obviously stout-hearted men, still loyal to a monarch who, in those days, had not yet lost his head though he was on the point of losing his throne.

Roberto put his mind to work. That morning, seeing the dog, he had noticed that the animal, when stroked, grew calmer but, touched more roughly, he yelped with pain. It took very little, on a ship tossed by the sea, to provoke various sensations in a sick body. Perhaps those villains believed they were receiving a message from far away, while on the contrary the dog suffered or experienced relief as the waves alternately jarred or lulled him. Or if, as Saint-Savin used to say, unconscious concepts existed, then Byrd by moving his hands caused the dog to react according to the doctor's own unconfessed wishes. Had he himself not said of Columbus that the man had erred, wishing to prove he had traveled farther? Was the destiny of the world thus affected by the way these madmen interpreted the language of a dog? Could a grumbling in the poor animal's belly make the villains decide they were approaching or moving away from a place desired by Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, all equally villainous? And was not he, Roberto, involved in this adventure in order one day to tell Mazarin and young Colbert how to populate the ships of France with tortured dogs?

The others by now had left. Roberto came out of his hiding place and stopped, in the light of his tarred rope, before the sleeping dog. He touched the creature's head gently. In that poor animal he saw all the suffering of the world, the furious tale told by an idiot. His slow education, from the Casale days to this moment, had brought him to this truth. Oh, if only he had remained a castaway on the desert island, as the Knight had wanted, or if only, as the Knight had also wanted, he had set fire to the
Amaryllis,
if only he had stopped at the third island, among those natives the color of burnt sienna, or on the fourth, where the Knight became the bard of that people. If only he had found Escondida, to hide there from all the assassins of this merciless world!

He did not know then that fate had in store for him, soon, a fifth island, perhaps the Last.

The
Amaryllis
seemed mad, and Roberto, clinging to everything along the way, returned to his cabin, forgetting the sickness of the world as he suffered instead the sickness of the sea. Then came the shipwreck, of which we have told. He had carried out his mission with success: sole survivor, he bore with him Dr. Byrd's secret. But he could no longer reveal it to anyone. And besides, it was perhaps a secret of no worth.

Was it not true that, having emerged from an unhealthy world, he had found true health? The wreck had granted him the supreme gift, exile, and a Lady whom no one could now take from him....

But the Island did not belong to him and remained distant. The
Daphne
did not belong to him, and Another claimed possession of her. Perhaps in order to continue experiments no less brutal than those of Dr. Byrd.

R
OBERTO STILL DID
not act, allowing the Intruder space to play in order to discover his game. He put the clocks back on the deck, wound them daily, then ran to feed the animals to prevent the Other from doing it, then he tidied every room and everything on deck, so that if the Other moved, his passage would be noted. During the day Roberto remained inside but with the door ajar, so as not to miss a sound from outside or from below; he kept watch at night, drank aqua vitae, again went down into the depths of the
Daphne.

He discovered two other storage spaces beyond the hawser locker towards the prow, one was empty, the other completely full, its walls covered with shelves that had raised edges to prevent objects, falling when the sea turned rough. He saw lizard skins dried in the sun, pits of fruit of forgotten identity, stones of various colors, pebbles polished by the sea, fragments of coral, insects pierced with a pin on a board, a fly and a spider in a piece of amber, a dried chameleon, jars filled with liquid in which young snakes or little eels floated, enormous bones (a whale's, he thought), the sword that must have adorned the snout of a fish, and a long horn which Roberto took for a unicorn's, though I believe it was a narwhal's. In short, a room revealing a taste for erudite collection, such as could be found in those days on the vessels of explorers and naturalists.

In the center there was an open case, empty except for some straw on the bottom. What it must have contained Roberto realized when he returned to his lodging and, opening the door, found an animal awaiting him, erect, more terrible than if it had been the Intruder himself in flesh and blood.

A rat, a sewer rat, no, a demon more than half a man's height, eyes glaring, a long tail stretching over the floor, it stood motionless on its hind legs while the front ones were like little arms stretched out towards Roberto. Short-haired, it had a bag on its belly, an opening, a natural sac from which a little monster of the same species was peering. We know how much thought Roberto had devoted to rats on the first two evenings; he had expected them big and wild, like all rats that live on ships. But this one exceeded his most fearful expectations. He could not believe that human eye had ever seen a rat of such dimensions—and, with reason, for as we will later see, it was, I have deduced, a marsupial.

When the first moment of terror was past, it became clear, from the invader's immobility, that the animal was stuffed, badly embalmed or badly preserved in the hold: the skin emanated an odor of decomposed organs, and tufts of straw were already spilling from its back.

The Intruder, shortly before Roberto entered the cabinet of wonders, had removed its most effective piece, and as Roberto was admiring that museum, he had placed the animal in Roberto's lodging, perhaps hoping that Roberto, victim, losing his reason, would rush to the bulwarks and plunge into the sea. He would have me dead, he would have me insane, Roberto muttered, but I will make him eat his rat in mouthfuls, I will stuff him and put him on those shelves. Where are you hiding, rogue, where are you, perhaps you are watching me to see if I lose my mind, but I will see you lose yours, scoundrel.

He pushed the animal onto the deck with the butt of his musket and, overcoming his revulsion, picked it up with his bare hands and flung it into the sea.

Determined to discover the hiding-place of the Intruder, he went back to the woodpile, taking care not to roll again on the logs now scattered over the floor. Beyond the wood he found a place that on the
Amaryllis
they called the soda (or
soute
or
sota
), for storing biscuit. Under a canvas there, carefully wrapped and protected, he found first of all a very large spyglass, more powerful than the one he had in his room, perhaps a Hyperbole of the Eyes intended for the exploration of the sky. The telescope was in a big basin of light metal, and beside the basin, also carefully wrapped, were instruments of uncertain nature, metallic arms, a circular cloth with rings along its circumference, a kind of helmet, and finally three rounded containers that, to his smell, seemed full of a thick, stagnant oil. What purpose this collection might serve, Roberto did not ask himself: at that moment what he sought was a living creature.