Laura Restrepo - Isle of Passion

“Instead of a troublemaker, that Madero sounds more like a saint to me,” commented Arnaud. “How could a man like that cause any harm?”

“well, so far so good. The trouble is that the spirit of the little dead one became revolutionary: the word is that he ordered his brother to devote himself to the campaign against Porfirio’s reelection. Madero, who does not dare to disobey the child because of his supernatural powers, followed his instructions and wrote an incendiary book that is selling like hotcakes.”

Arnaud was listening in silence and the captain of El Demócrata continued without taking a breath, scrambling his words one on top of the other. He said that Madero’s book called for sabotaging the reelection the following year, and he was sure of this because he had read it himself. And that the book urged the founding of a party to oppose the president.

“I assure you, Governor, that this damned party has many members already. The disgruntled, those with a chip on their shoulder, the ungrateful ones, all follow him. Francisco Madero has turned into the leader of those who believe that thirty years in power is enough, and that at eighty Don Porfirio is ready to wear the wooden suit rather than the presidential sash.”

Distressed about the amazing news but unable to wholly believe it, Ramón left the celebration, which had just begun, and walked in darkness all the way to his office.

On the way he met a group of his men, all huddled under the light of a candle to read the letters their relatives had sent.

“What news did you get from home, soldier?”

“Nothing but bad news, Captain. My mother is sick, and she is all alone now because my brothers decided to join the insurgents.”

“And what about you, Corporal?”

“About the same, sir. My uncle says the peons in the hacienda where he works also want to leave and join the rebels. And maybe he will also join them.”

Arnaud locked himself up in his office and lighted the kerosene lamp. He wanted to read the newspapers and magazines that his superior, Colonel Avalos, had selected and sent on El Demócrata . He devoured every issue of El Imparcial , page by page, looking for clues of the discontent, for indicators of the national commotion, traces of the opponents of the “reelectionists” or of Madero and his little brother. He found not a word. Not even a hint of their existence. All the news was about the inauguration of another new bridge or another new segment of railroad track, or the receptions honoring this or that foreign ambassador, or about the decoration bestowed upon Don Porfirio by the Emperor of Japan.

Arnaud had to double-check the dates to make sure he had not been sent newspapers from a year or two ago. No, they were all recent, not even two months old. However, it seemed to him he had read those exact words many times before. The only novelties he found, and he clipped them for his archives, were an extensive article about the influence of cold weather on the Russian character, another one on anthills, and, lastly, an article about botanical science in Manchuria.

He walked back, with long strides, to the party in the storehouse, mixed with the people, played his mandolin with more zest than ever, and danced out of step as usual. When Alicia approached him to inquire why he was so euphoric, he surprised her with an answer that sounded rather like a harangue.

“There is nothing going on in Mexico. Everything is fine and dandy. If Captain Mayorga says otherwise, then he must be the one who is raving, the one who is loony. That old Porfirio will not be toppled from his throne, not even with dynamite. And as long as he keeps his post, I will keep mine. The old fox might be very old, but he’s still very foxy, and he can swallow all of them whole. He can withstand six, ten, twelve reelections. This Francisco Madero is plain humbug!”

The last storm had come on New Year’s Eve. Then, after the electricity dissipated and the hysterical rains subsided, the winter skies, which had hung over Clipperton asphyxiating it like a cardboard ceiling, lifted and the azure reappeared, rising higher and higher.

After the arrival of the ship, and under the vibrant January sun, Clipperton came back to life, and its residents emerged as if roused from a heavy, humid siesta. There was again a flurry of activity in every corner of the isle.

Gustav Schultz made his employees double their workload, while he tripled his own. He repaired all the damage the rains had caused to the Decauville train tracks, filled the empty storehouses with tons of guano, and made a clean copy of his accounting records. In two weeks he had everything working again like a Swiss watch. He behaved as if he had never received orders from his company to start dismantling all installations, or as if he had misinterpreted them to mean just the opposite: that Clipperton was their future key location. Nobody questioned his actions since, as a given, no one expected to understand his reply. Alicia, however, thought she understood.

“Schultz, in his way, is reacting in the same way as all of us,” she told Ramón. “He simply does not want to recognize that everything he has accomplished here is a complete waste.”

The obsession with finding the Clipperton treasure took hold of Arnaud’s body and soul, and he, in turn, infused his delirium into Cardona and the rest of the men in the garrison. They decided to begin their search in the lagoon, and for that purpose they improvised a diver’s suit and fixed, as best they could, a damaged deep-sea diver’s headgear given them by the captain of El Demócrata . Cutting through the timeless waters, they descended into a dark, elusive world where they experienced the sensation of burying themselves alive. They had always thought there were no fish in the lagoon: nobody had ever fished there. However, in the deepest zone they could see ancient, timid creatures, the size of seals and armor-plated with thick scales, lying in wait in the grottoes or seeking protection behind clouds of volcanic lime. The men were convinced that the monsters, the only inhabitants familiar with these depths, could lead the divers to the place where the treasure was hidden, and more than once trying to follow them, they got stuck in the underwater rock labyrinths.

After a couple of months, they had to knock off their project. They had found nothing more than crumbling old detritus, and even though they obstinately persisted in their search, they could not continue because the strong salt and sulfurous acid concentration was burning their eyes and eating away their skin. Neither the deep-sea diving headgear nor the improvised diver’s suit had given them enough protection against these malodorous waters, powerful enough to corrode anything that touched them.

They abandoned the lagoon but continued the exploration of the big rock on the southern shore of the isle. They climbed to the top, holding on to the sharp-edged ridges along its sides, and explored all its caves and crevices. They discovered that the big rock was hollow the day they found a hole near the top. At first they thought it was a lair, but it proved to be the entrance to its great interior space. With the help of ropes, they dropped down inside the cave, convinced they had at last found the place where Clipperton the pirate had hidden his treasure.

From the top opening, a cone of sunlight penetrated the interior, interrupted from every direction by thousands of bats in blind flight. In all the surrounding darkness there was a bitter, sticky smell like the musk of a caged animal, secreted by the glands of the bats or by the amorphous mass of fat toads huddled on top of one another in the background. In this exceedingly compressed kingdom of small black animals, the silence was so overpowering that it produced a ringing in the ears. In this spot, neither a puff of wind nor the sound of the sea could reach them.