Read Online Isle of Passion by Laura Restrepo - Free Book Online
Authors: Laura Restrepo
Tags: General Fiction
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left above sea level. What had been the crater of a volcano was now a lagoon of brackish waters, effervescent with sulfur coming from the belly of the earth.
The captain goes on: “[The isle] has a promontory 62 feet high on its southwest coast, which at first sight looks like a ship’s sail, and on approaching it, like a gigantic castle. This promontory can be seen from a distance of 12 to 15 miles provided there is no fog: then, the promontory and the isle itself can only be seen when it is already at very close range.
“The breakers on its eastern shore do not provide early enough warning for a ship to change course in order to avoid running aground. The isle is surrounded by an uninterrupted coral reef on which the ocean pounds heavily and ceaselessly, sometimes covering the isle. There are sharks swimming around. During the rainy season, waterfalls cascade on its southwestern coast.
“While we were circumnavigating the isle, I saw more seagulls, flying fish, and butterflies than I had ever seen on a similar stretch of coastline,” Perril comments, amazed at this place which, lacking any vegetation, no blade of grass to soften the hostility of those rocks, nonetheless abounds in an unusual and alarming proliferation of animal life. “Thousands of birds fly around the island, and the guano deposits are being exploited commercially. A colony was established to operate a phosphate plant some years ago. [ . . . ] A layer of guano several feet deep covers the isle. There is no doubt that birds have inhabited it for years.”
Nine years earlier, and from the deck of another ship, the Corrigan II , the Arnauds had viewed, full of expectation, what for them was a promised land. Though that happened long before and they were seeing the isle through glasses of a different color, what they saw could not have been much dissimilar to what the American captain, H. P. Perril, saw when he accidentally approached its shores.
Clipperton, 1908
T HERE WAS A BUNCH OF CHILDREN and women watching them from shore. Alicia looked at them from the barge, and they seemed dejected and lonesome in that hot weather. Their tanned skin, dark and dry, withstood the rigors of the sun while the white sun glare bleached out all the colors, already faded, of the scant garments they wore. Boobies, the shore birds, fluttered around them and walked over their feet, and people shooed them away with either strong arm gestures or lazy kicks.
The small, faded universe in front of her eyes reverberated and consumed itself in a slow combustion. Alicia saw how the ocean seemed to explode over the reefs, pounding the rocks, the few sickly coconut palms, and the human beings, then coming to rest on every crevice, hollow, and cranny. The sun lost no time in evaporating the water, and everything was soon covered with a mirrorlike layer of salt, refulgent, blinding. The ocean spray would fall slowly on the people, transforming them into salt statues. It was only in their eyes, in the feverish eagerness in their gaze, that Alicia discovered the great expectations, repressed but fierce, for the boat’s arrival.
A few yards ahead of the women, a half-dozen soldiers stood firmly, their heads covered with big straw hats, their drill uniforms battered, their feet in huarache sandals. They also appeared sleepy and blurred, like tin soldiers melting in the sun. They all look like castaways, Alicia thought uneasily. Someday I myself will be watching for the arrival of a boat and will also have an expression on my face like Juan Diego’s when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to him.
Two masculine figures stood out in the group. One was a youthful man of medium height in uniform and the only one who seemed vital, miraculously fresh in his clean shirt, and the other was a big strong man, radically blond, with a single thick eyebrow extending from one temple to the other without a break in the middle. On a big pole set in a cement base in the midst of everything, a
The captain goes on: “[The isle] has a promontory 62 feet high on its southwest coast, which at first sight looks like a ship’s sail, and on approaching it, like a gigantic castle. This promontory can be seen from a distance of 12 to 15 miles provided there is no fog: then, the promontory and the isle itself can only be seen when it is already at very close range.
“The breakers on its eastern shore do not provide early enough warning for a ship to change course in order to avoid running aground. The isle is surrounded by an uninterrupted coral reef on which the ocean pounds heavily and ceaselessly, sometimes covering the isle. There are sharks swimming around. During the rainy season, waterfalls cascade on its southwestern coast.
“While we were circumnavigating the isle, I saw more seagulls, flying fish, and butterflies than I had ever seen on a similar stretch of coastline,” Perril comments, amazed at this place which, lacking any vegetation, no blade of grass to soften the hostility of those rocks, nonetheless abounds in an unusual and alarming proliferation of animal life. “Thousands of birds fly around the island, and the guano deposits are being exploited commercially. A colony was established to operate a phosphate plant some years ago. [ . . . ] A layer of guano several feet deep covers the isle. There is no doubt that birds have inhabited it for years.”
Nine years earlier, and from the deck of another ship, the Corrigan II , the Arnauds had viewed, full of expectation, what for them was a promised land. Though that happened long before and they were seeing the isle through glasses of a different color, what they saw could not have been much dissimilar to what the American captain, H. P. Perril, saw when he accidentally approached its shores.
Clipperton, 1908
T HERE WAS A BUNCH OF CHILDREN and women watching them from shore. Alicia looked at them from the barge, and they seemed dejected and lonesome in that hot weather. Their tanned skin, dark and dry, withstood the rigors of the sun while the white sun glare bleached out all the colors, already faded, of the scant garments they wore. Boobies, the shore birds, fluttered around them and walked over their feet, and people shooed them away with either strong arm gestures or lazy kicks.
The small, faded universe in front of her eyes reverberated and consumed itself in a slow combustion. Alicia saw how the ocean seemed to explode over the reefs, pounding the rocks, the few sickly coconut palms, and the human beings, then coming to rest on every crevice, hollow, and cranny. The sun lost no time in evaporating the water, and everything was soon covered with a mirrorlike layer of salt, refulgent, blinding. The ocean spray would fall slowly on the people, transforming them into salt statues. It was only in their eyes, in the feverish eagerness in their gaze, that Alicia discovered the great expectations, repressed but fierce, for the boat’s arrival.
A few yards ahead of the women, a half-dozen soldiers stood firmly, their heads covered with big straw hats, their drill uniforms battered, their feet in huarache sandals. They also appeared sleepy and blurred, like tin soldiers melting in the sun. They all look like castaways, Alicia thought uneasily. Someday I myself will be watching for the arrival of a boat and will also have an expression on my face like Juan Diego’s when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to him.
Two masculine figures stood out in the group. One was a youthful man of medium height in uniform and the only one who seemed vital, miraculously fresh in his clean shirt, and the other was a big strong man, radically blond, with a single thick eyebrow extending from one temple to the other without a break in the middle. On a big pole set in a cement base in the midst of everything, a
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