Isle of Passion (28 page)

His wives did not live long; three of them died in childbirth. But not Aleja. She prevailed, surviving her childbirths, and bearing him countless children. The general recognized some and gave them his name. They were his illegitimate, mulatto descendants, among them Victoriano Alvarez, father of the Clipperton Victoriano.

General Alvarez was named governor on July 15, 1857, and five weeks later, during his siesta, his political enemies rioted and gathered at the plaza shouting their slogan, “Law and Religion.” Annoyed, the general woke up, and when informed of the news, he was furious. Livid with rage and without waiting for anyone, he loaded his guns, jumped on his horse, and rushed toward the plaza to end the revolt all by himself. He didn’t get past the first intersection. A gun blast received him, and a bullet nested in his heart. The family went to the church and asked to let him have the last rites and absolution administered postmortem, as was the custom when Christians died suddenly or violently, and to allow his being laid to rest in the cemetery. The parish priest denied the request because the general, a liberal through and through, had been excommunicated for supporting the federal constitution. Finally the priest acceded, in exchange for two thousand pesos, provided they let him whip the demons out of the dead body. So after receiving the bullet that killed him, General Alvarez had to withstand a whipping, and then he was able to go down peacefully into his sepulcher.

His fourth wife, Panchita Córdoba, was young when he died, and soon married Filomeno Bravo. Good-looking Filomeno, reputedly the handsomest man in Mexico, held fast to the household’s same macho and big-daddy traditions practiced by the deceased general. His blue eyes and golden beard made him resemble Emperor Maximilian himself, which served him well in order to reach Empress Carlota’s bed no less. After this, there was no woman he could not claim. He was shrewd and resourceful enough to court them and deceive them all. One afternoon he picked up an unknown, pretty woman all dressed in red. He pulled her onto his horse and took her to the outskirts of town, where he made love to her in an open field. He was seen by neighbors passing by. Before anyone could relay the story to Panchita, his wife, Filomeno rushed home, ordered her to put on a red dress, pulled her onto his horse, and took her on horseback to the outskirts of town, where he made love to her in an open field. That way, if anyone came to her with the story, she, blissfully innocent, would believe that “the mystery lady in the red dress was no one but me.”

When the great Benito Juárez, then president of Mexico, came one day to Colima, he was about to be shot by Filomeno the Blond, who decided to spare his life. Benito Juárez, in gratitude, signed a card for him that read: “You have reciprocity for your life.” So once when Filomeno, imprisoned in Zacatecas, was about to be executed, he showed the card promising “reciprocity for your life,” and was let go. Years later, like General Alvarez, he was also killed by a bullet to his heart, and the people of Colima thought up an epitaph for him: “Filomeno’s pax is a relief for everybody’s ass.”

Miguel Alvarez García, General Manuel Alvarez’s grandson, was also a governor, and a great-grandchild, Griselda Alvarez Ponce de León, was a governor as well. Pomp and circumstance accompanied the Alvarez family for several generations. At least for the white, legitimate Alvarezes, those who lived in the front part of the house.

Victoriano, the mulatto grandson of the general and his black servant Aleja, shared the fate of those who lived at the back of the house. He learned of the family history through the maids’ gossip. He was an invisible, mute witness to the economic success, the political struggles, and the military adventures of his grandfather, uncles, and his white siblings and cousins. Through the cracks he spied on their amorous conquests and their forced ones. Until he got tired of lusting after the women they possessed, got bored with their feats, that is, with admiring and envying their style of life. He wanted to live his own life, so he joined the army and ended up in Clipperton.

T
HE RAFT THAT WAS TAKING
Arnaud and Cardona became unreal, like a faded memory, as it entered a zone of greenish fog. The women and children were watching it from the beach. They saw it moving away with difficulty toward the reef, bobbing up and down, fragile and tentative, in the treacherously contradictory ocean waves. The effort exerted by the two men rowing diligently made the raft advance, but the force of the waves kept pushing it back. It moved away, grew smaller, darker; it approached, became more visible, and then disappeared again. From the beach, the women kept it afloat with the power of their eyes, they saved it through their prayers to the Saint of Cabora, they brought it closer to shore with the power of their thoughts. When the image became more blurred, they waded in up to their knees to bring it nearer and to hold it back, to rescue it.

“Do you think they’ll reach the ship?” Alicia asked Tirsa. Their soaked petticoats entangled their legs and they had to hold on to each other’s arms in order to withstand the waves and the wind. “Say yes, please say yes.”

“I don’t see the ship anymore.”

“But Rosalía sees it. And Ramón was sure—”

“Maybe it’s behind the fog. Maybe they can get to it, Tirsa.”

“There is nothing, and you know it. Shout with me.”

They shouted together—they all shouted, the children shouted—but the noise of the churning sea swallowed their voices.

The raft was getting close to the reefs and was being jostled about. It would ride up to the crest of a wave and then fall. The women lost sight of it, and then it appeared again, floating amid the greenish vapors or on top of another mountain of water. A big black wave pulled it back toward the beach.

“They’re coming back! They heard us, and they’re coming back!”

“Yes, they are returning.”

The women were screaming until their voices became hoarse. Speaking at the same time, they cursed, they prayed, they argued. Another wave caught the raft and threw it against the rocks.

Alicia covered her eyes with her hands.

“Tell me if they went over the reef,” she pleaded.

“I don’t see them. Yes, I do! There they are—”

“Do you see them?”

“Yes, over there.”

“Thank heaven. . . . Are they all right?”

“I think so. But look . . . look at that dark thing that is coming out of the water.”

“A dark thing—”

“It’s a manta ray. The ray is attacking them!”

“Shut up, Rosalía. Those are rocks. Tirsa, do you see them?”

“I only see shadows.”

“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be—”

“Stop praying, Alta, and take care of the children.”

The seven children had forgotten all about the raft and were mindlessly splashing about in the water.

“I am telling you it is a manta ray. It overturned the raft!”

“Open your eyes, Alicia. Help me look.”

“No, I see them. They sank! Can anybody see them?”

“There they go, there they go, I see my papa!”

“Children, hush!”

“My daddy is struggling with a manta ray.”

“Shut up! Don’t you understand? Altagracia, I’m telling you to get the children out of the water. Tirsa, do you see them?”

“No, Alicia, I don’t see them.”

“Altagracia, do you see them?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Rosalía, anybody! How come nobody sees anything?”

“Oh, Jesus, the sea swallowed them.”

“You shut up, too! Come, Tirsa, come with me.” Alicia waded deeper into the water. Ramoncito clung to her neck.

“Ramoncito, you must go back to shore.”

“No.”

“Go away, you’re going to drown, and you’re drowning me. Somebody come and get this child!”

Altagracia pulled the screaming Ramoncito away. The rest walked away also. Only Alicia and Tirsa remained, getting deeper into the water until they couldn’t touch bottom. So they floated for a while, swallowing water each time the waves went over their heads.

“Tirsa, do you see them?”

“No, I haven’t seen them for a while. I see shark fins.”

“Sharks? The sharks got them!”

“Wait. Let’s go to the beach to look for them, maybe they came back on the other side.”

They got out of the water. The children were running, all wet, their teeth chattering with cold.

“Alta, you stay with the children. Take off their clothes and put them out to dry. Everybody, help us search for Ramón and Cardona. Rosalía and Francisca, you go that way. Tirsa and I will go this way.”

They spent the rest of the morning walking over the ground coral all around the shore. Sometimes one of them seemed to see something, and they both would go into the water, calling their men in loud voices, and then they would come out of the water and continue walking. By midafternoon their feet were bleeding, cut by the broken coral. Occasionally they met the other women.

“Did you see them?”

“Nothing.”

“Keep looking. Keep looking until you find them.”

They met Altagracia and the kids. Ramoncito ran after his mother and clung to her legs.

“Not now, child.”

Ramoncito cried. He did not want to let go.

“Alta, take this child away. Give them something to eat. They must be hungry.”

“What do I give them?”

“Whatever you can find.”

“There is no fish.”

“Give them eggs. Give them water, they are thirsty. Get them dressed, they are cold.”

“Their clothes are all wet.”

“Then light a bonfire. Let me go, Ramón. Help Alta make a bonfire.”

“And Daddy? I know where Daddy is.”

“Where?”

“At home. He got there already.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Alicia ran home. The child ran after her, and Altagracia after the child. When they arrived, they found the house empty.

“Didn’t you, ma’am, have something to look at things from far away?”

“Ramón gave it to the Dutchmen.”

“If they could reach Acapulco, maybe the master can also.”

“On a few tied-up boards? Don’t be silly. Take this child with you, Alta. Play with him, put him to sleep, feed him, do anything, but take him away from me. I must find Ramón.”

Alicia and Tirsa ran toward the southern rock. Seeing them go away, Ramoncito screamed, and with so much crying and hiccups, he could barely breathe. The other children, meanwhile, were playing blindman’s buff. The two women climbed up to the lighthouse and searched in all directions until their eyes hurt. The fog had grown thicker, and it was like a veil occasionally parted by the sharp fins of the sharks. Nightfall found them still there, battered by the wind’s frozen eddies, and they were still there at dawn, eyes fixed on the horizon. The sun was coming up strong, dissipating the phantasmagoric mists, and the sea woke up in shades of yellow, rose, and orange, without even a shadow to darken the limpid sunshine.

The following days were like one another, and brought no changes. Alicia wrapped her wounded feet in rags to protect them from the coral, and she wandered about the beaches incessantly, in an anguished, irrational agitation. Once in a while, she would mutter in passing.

“Alta, the children are hungry. Feed them.”

“What do I feed them, ma’am?”

“Whatever you can.”

Or else it would go like this:

“Alta, it’s very late. Put the children to bed.”

“They don’t want to, ma’am.”

“Then, let them stay up a while longer.”

She didn’t go to bed at all. She would wander around the isle like a soul in purgatory, always looking at the sea. Ramoncito, whimpering and with a runny nose, would trot behind her.

“Mommy, I know where Daddy is.”

“Listen, let’s not pretend.”

On the third day, Alicia sat in a corner of the kitchen, her feet full of blisters. She could no longer move and remained there, silent, catatonic, until Rosalía came with the news that she had seen the raft buried in the sand toward the north shore. Forgetting about her feet, Alicia rushed out, with the child tagging behind her as usual. The raft was there, but not the men. Not even a trace of them.

“Tirsa, do you think they are dead?”

“Yes.”

Alicia lay down on the sand as if she had decided to stay there forever. More than a widow’s sorrow, she felt the spite of an abandoned bride. A painful kind of anger and unreasonable jealousy consumed her. It was the sorrowful rancor of a woman whose lover leaves her for another woman, or of a man betrayed by his friends. There was no letup in her anxiety, like a woman demanding of her lover to come back, or like a man expecting a well-deserved apology. To leave and abandon her had been Ramón’s betrayal. If he ever returned, she would throw that in his face. What right had he of dying in such an absurd manner, so senselessly, and leaving her so desolate? If he ever returned, she would tell him: Didn’t you think of your children before taking such risks? If he returned—of course she would pardon him. She would embrace him, adore him, she would dry his feet with her hair. If he returned—perhaps he would return, surely he would. And Alicia lifted her head again to search the horizon.