Laura Restrepo - Isle of Passion

Captain Perril protested. “I am going to make a foolish request, Admiral. You know the men don’t like to get near that isle. I know there are superstitions, of course, but if possible, it would be better to avoid it.”

“I’m sorry, Captain, it can’t be done. It is well within our area of operation.” Fullam was explicit, knowing well what Perril was referring to. Clipperton was one of those places sailors consider bad omens, in part because of the difficulties they present for navigation, in part due to superstition. In the case of Clipperton, there seemed to be a good basis for both, since the number of shipwrecks around it was strangely elevated.

The ship’s itinerary had been, in fact, slow and boring, and as they had suspected, it had been only a rumor, they did not find even a trace of the Germans. Accustomed to matter-of-fact issues, Captain Perril felt uncomfortable about this wild-goose chase. To make things worse, now he also had to pass by Clipperton. After Perril read his navigation instructions and the unfavorable information about access to the atoll, he was convinced that he should not make any attempt except in broad daylight.

Therefore, that Monday afternoon of 16 July, he reduced speed in order to reach the isle at dawn on Wednesday. On Tuesday, at 2000, he veered the gunboat slightly east so that, maintaining course during the night, their position in the morning would be five miles east of the isle. However, a night squall had altered his plans somewhat, and by 0600 Wednesday, Clipperton was still not in sight as expected. The isle had not yet appeared by seven, nor by eight, and Captain Perril, convinced that it had been left behind, decided with some relief not to reverse course. He was troubled to learn then, at 0950, that against all odds, Clipperton had suddenly emerged from the mist dead ahead.

The encounter had been a matter of chance rather than willingness, or, perhaps, it had been due to the isle’s willpower rather than his own. In spite of his Anglo-Saxon phlegm and pragmatism, Captain Perril could not help but feel disturbed by the idea that this undesirable place had willed him to its shores. Notwithstanding, the Yorktown approached the coast without any difficulty. The ship circumnavigated the atoll while Perril watched through his spyglass without finding anything abnormal. On the contrary, it was sort of a deception, since everything he saw was small, barren, quiet, insignificant. Nothing that could suggest a black legend. The only signs of life seemed to be some people with handkerchiefs waving good-bye. Just the usual. A while later the people were still waving handkerchiefs, and it seemed to the captain there were perhaps women, and also children, running on the beach waving good-bye.

They keep doing that, Perril thought. They must have nothing to do.

He considered his mission accomplished, and was about to give orders to set sail, when something made him change his mind. Nothing specific, just an impulse, the stirring of a premonition. He ordered his second in command, Lieutenant Kerr, to get ready to disembark. Kerr looked at him in surprise. A risky landing would have to be made by boat because of the choppy seas, and there was no apparent justification for it. Perril noticed his bewilderment and tried to formulate an explanation.

“I want to know whether the lighthouse I see over there is working,” he said without conviction. Lieutenant Kerr nodded, but his bewildered expression did not change.

I AM LOOKING FOR ALTAGRACIA Quiroz, the chambermaid at the Hotel San Agustín who left for Clipperton as nursemaid for the Arnauds’ children. I find out she died last year at a very old age, but I meet with her cousin, who was close to her and knew her well. Her name is Guillermina Yamada. She had a Japanese father and a Mexican mother, and lives in the town of Taxco. She is tall and slender, her fingers are long and aristocratic, and she has deep circles under her Asiatic eyes.

I interview her on July 5, 1988, a day before the presidential elections. All of Mexico is papered with posters, and the faces of the candidates jump out from all the walls and around every corner. Aside from the election din, the place where she lives looks like a tourist postcard. It is a small house with balconies and bougainvillea, squeezed in with other houses on a narrow, uphill street: Number 9 on Benito Juárez, a few yards away from the Taxco zócalo .

Guillermina’s manner is deliberate and aloof, and she apologizes for her failing memory. She explains that after her husband’s death she suffered a brain seizure that erased all the past from her mind. She never recovered and even forgets the present, she says, her daughters have to help her find her things, because she does not remember where she places them.

At first, sometime after Altagracia returned from Clipperton, they had been like mother and daughter, because of their age difference. Altagracia was born in 1901 and Guillermina in 1918. But later, as time went on, they became friends, confidants.

I inquire about Altagracia’s life after her return from Clipperton. “Tell me, Doña Guillermina, did your cousin ever get married?”

“Yes, of course she did, with a man called — you are not going to believe this—”

“Yes, I believe you. I have been told already. His name was Gustav Schultz, and he represented a foreign company dealing in guano at Clipperton.”

“Exactly. Isn’t it unbelievable? The love story of those two is like a soap opera.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it.”

Guillermina remembers more than she believes; she is more lucid than she claims to be. Between one apology and another about the weakness of her mind, she tells me about her cousin, the woman who had been like a mother to her, and who later became her best friend, Señora Altagracia Quiroz Schultz.

“Alta died a year ago, I accompanied her in her last days. I had a debt to repay to her, because she had accompanied me in my life. For many years we had talked and talked, but at the end she could not hold a conversation. She had lost her mind by the time she died, due to all the beatings she had to endure from that sick soldier. He damaged her for life. She had an inoperable tumor that gradually made her insane. In her last days she could not make any sense, but only at the end, when she was very old. Not before. Before, she only had memory lapses once in a while. During those times she got desperate when all her memory went, but afterward she recovered, and the rhythm of her life continued.

““Altagracia must have suffered a lot on the isle,” says her cousin and goddaughter, Doña Guillermina, “because that man tortured her mercilessly. He was what is called a sadist. She could never have children with her husband, the German fellow, and that was also the result of the damage done to her by that evil man who raped the women. He beat all the women on the head, grabbing them by the hair and dragging them on the ground. Alta had the most beautiful, longest hair that I have ever seen in my life. But you are not right when you say that all the women cut their hair in Clipperton because it interfered with their work, with doing the men’s jobs that life had forced them to do. It did not bother them, because they kept it in thick braids tied up on top of their heads. That was not the reason. They cut their hair so nobody would use it to drag them around, and knock them unconscious.”

“Then they cut their hair to spare their heads.”

“That’s right. That Victoriano Alvarez, Alta used to tell me, was so evil that he held the isle in a spell so that ships would not get close to it. They knew it was he who kept them isolated, and that as long as he was alive, that spell on Clipperton would not be broken. That was why, and also because he beat them and raped them, they wanted to kill him. Altagracia told me that when they could not stand it anymore, they had once prepared him some poison, mixed with marmalade, in order to do away with him. He realized it was a trick, and that day they were the ones almost done in. His fury turned him into a more cruel beast than he usually was. He grabbed them by the hair, one by one, and beat them all unconscious. It was then that they decided to cut their hair short.”