Laura Restrepo - Isle of Passion

Lieutenant Kerr went up to the bridge and discussed the whole procedure again with Captain Perril. They agreed to attempt a landing farther to the northwest, where the sea seemed less aggressive.

Sitting on the beach, worried and puzzled by the conversation, and unaware of what was happening on the other side, Victoriano Alvarez continued baiting his hooks nervously, trying to figure out what was behind Alicia’s words.

“What you are proposing, ma’am, sounds good to me,” he said. “For us to become husband and wife, both to be governors, and to live in peace. What I don’t understand is why now, when you never wanted this to happen before.”

“I always treated you right.”

“Yes, in a condescending way. But you never treated me like a man.”

“I had my husband, Victoriano, and I loved him very much.”

“But then you became a widow, and you didn’t change.”

“Then I had the baby, and besides, I was in mourning.”

“Are you through now?”

“I think so.”

She noticed that Tirsa had stood up, walked away, and was moving her hands behind her back. Alicia guessed she was pulling loose the mallet secured with a rope, and made a superhuman effort not to follow her with her eyes so that Victoriano would not turn around.

“And your children, will they accept me as their father?” he asked.

Alicia had begun to tremble, and her mouth turned dry. “If you treat them right, of course—” the tension strangling the words in her throat as she felt Tirsa’s shadow approaching.

If I look at her now, Alicia knew, Victoriano will kill her. But her eyes did not obey and moved on their own, her pupils dilated, fixed on the mallet that Tirsa had raised over the head with the red hair. In Alicia’s glance Victoriano saw the reflection of his own death. He recognized it immediately: he had faced it many times before. Once more he fought to evade it by trying to escape. He lurched to one side, but his sick legs responded very slowly. His movement was clumsy, his attempt faltered, and the descending mallet hit him on the nape of the neck. He was stunned for a fraction of a second, then recovered his reflexes, now sharpened, and instinctively reached for one of the harpoons. Tirsa was retreating, surprised that her attempt had failed, while Alicia watched the scene in a daze, numbed, as if she herself had received the blow. She felt like running away but restrained herself. She saw how Victoriano had taken the harpoon and was aiming it between Tirsa’s eyes, and saw her flex her legs, recover her position, and wait for the attack, ready to defend herself with the mallet. If I don’t do something, the harpoon will go through her, Alicia thought, and she lunged at the man from the side, far from the harpoon’s point. An arm curled around her neck and squeezed. She felt the sudden lack of air in her lungs, but remembering to use her mouth, she opened and closed it, digging her teeth in up to their roots. She recognized the taste of blood, and focused her whole being on the strength of the bite, aware that no earthly power could force her to let go. Tirsa took advantage of that moment to raise the mallet again, letting it fall where it would, and she heard Victoriano roar. She laughed, suddenly fascinated by her own strength.

“This time I will kill you, Victoriano,” she told him without anger, almost joyfully. “So that you learn not to go around raping women.”

With self-assurance and precision, without haste, repulsion, or remorse, she dealt a final blow right in the middle of his head and heard an abrupt, muffled dry noise, like that of a machete splitting a coconut.

“Let him go now,” Tirsa told Alicia, who was still biting. “He is dead.”

Alicia had to make an effort. Her jaws were rigid, as if welded together after pressing so hard. She pulled back, prying her teeth away from the inert arm around her neck, and stood next to the other woman. The body on the ground shook with a tremor, its bones clattered, and its eyes turned. Tirsa held the harpoon, took aim, and thrust it deep into the corpse’s chest.

“Enough! Why did you do that?” Alicia screamed.

“Just in case.”

“That’s enough. Let’s go, we’ll miss the ship.”

““And what about him? Do we leave him lying here, without burying him?”

“Let the sea take him away at high tide.”

They left, running as fast as their legs would permit, passed by the southern rock, and reached the little beach where they had left the other women, but there was no one. The ship was nowhere to be seen. Farther north on the isle, there seemed to be some movement, so there they headed, arriving just when the four men were landing.

“Could you take us on your ship?” Alicia begged, half in English and half in Spanish, while extending her hand in greeting. “Pleased to meet you, I am Alicia Rovira, Captain Arnaud’s widow. Could you take us to Acapulco or to Salina Cruz, please? These are my children, and these are my friends and their children. We are five women and nine children. We have been here eight years already, and we want to go back home.”

Lieutenant Kerr, who was looking at them wide-eyed as if they were from another planet, nodded and indicated they could climb on the boat.

“Give us one hour,” Alicia pleaded in English, “ just one hour, please , to collect our belongings.”

They dispersed, and Alicia went home and dug up her trunk. She took out her bar of Ivory soap, put her four children into a tub of rainwater, and washed their hair, their faces, their bodies. She dressed Olga in a sailor suit that had belonged to Ramoncito, and for him and her oldest daughter, she found two of her blouses, of embroidered organza, that covered down to their knees. She combed their hair, made them sit where they would not get dirty, and ordered them not to move while she got dressed.

She called Tirsa, who was chasing after the only two remaining live pigs in order to take them also, and told her that she had stored enough clothes for both of them.

“No, Alicia. Thanks, but I never dressed that way, and I think I would look strange.”

“And don’t you think you look strange with that sailcloth sack, so thick it can stand up on its own?”

“I feel more comfortable because I look more like who I am.”

Alicia took all the time she needed to bathe. She covered every inch of her body with white foam from the Ivory soap, and then poured jugs of water to rinse herself off, feeling that the very cold water was purging all of her old anxieties and dead memories, besides Victoriano’s splattered, dry blood. She dried herself carefully, allowing no moisture to remain. From a nail care box she took out an orange stick, saved from floods and hurricanes for years, and removed the cuticles from each finger. When her hands seemed acceptable, she placed the wedding band and diamond ring on her left hand. She looked at herself this way and that in the broken mirror, trying to recognize from some angle the perfect features of the woman she had been. Putting on her earrings, she got distracted for a moment by the violet gleams of the diamonds in the sunlight. She slipped into her corset with copper eyelets and shiny braids, but when she wanted to adjust it, she realized how big it was on her and how many pounds she had lost. She chose a silk blouse in a rosemary color, pleated in front, with high neck and puff sleeves, which closed with a long row of tiny buttons. She shivered as her skin felt the fresh contact of the silk, and she buttoned the blouse slowly, enjoying the touch of each button, one by one, as it passed through its buttonhole. She clasped her gray pearl necklace, making sure the brooch was in front, to show it off. Out of her trunk she chose a floor-length taffeta skirt, black and smooth, then gathered her short hair under a woven straw hat with big muslin flowers, petal pink. She pushed it to the front, to the back, to one side and then the other, until she found the exact position that suited her best.