Free Isle of Passion by Laura Restrepo

former owner, Arthur James Brander, was persnickety and a lover of luxury. He had accepted the position from the other side of the planet on condition that he be allowed to take with him a ready-to-assemble house of the best quality, and that the company would also pay for his Filipino servant’s fare. The man was a devoted servant who allowed his master to win at chess and who, even in Clipperton, served him his tea with just-baked muffins, promptly at five o’clock.
    The Englishman had set the house in the only place on the island where the opaque, gray Pacific Ocean became translucent with underwater glimmerings, and where the unhealthy, suffocating smells from the lagoon were blown away by the breeze from the trade winds. An expert carpenter himself, Brander had complemented the basic structure with details of refinement: built-in bookcases and shelves, carved shutters for the windows. For the veranda facing east, he had brought from Nicaragua a hammock where he would lie, a shot of authentic Scotch whiskey in hand, to watch the sunrise. On the other side, on the corridor facing west, he enjoyed another hammock, another Scotch, and sunsets.
    Within an hour, boxes and trunks filled with the Arnauds’ paraphernalia invaded the corridors of the Brander house. In the following days Ramón watched, crestfallen, as Alicia toiled with the eagerness of a worker ant and the nimbleness of a squirrel, moving things around and locating them almost anywhere but the places he had so meticulously planned.
    She ordered the pots of geraniums to be unloaded where he had thought of constructing a chicken coop; she placed beds and mattresses where he wanted to have the dining room; kept her embroidery and sewing fabrics in the drawers of a desk he had thought his; housed chickens and ducks where he had the toolshed in mind; and stored preserves and marmalades on the shelves he had reserved for medications.
    “Please stop for just a minute, honey,” he begged her, “and let’s have some lime blossom tea, which will soothe us while we put some sense into this pandemonium.”
    She sat beside him, perspiring, listened to him uneasily, and five minutes later was again on her feet emptying trunks, hanging curtains, planting lettuce. She ordered her Pianola unloaded and placed in one corner, then in another; then she changed her mind and ordered it taken out again.
    “You are running around like a chicken without a head, without thinking,” Ramón said to her on the third day of seeing her incessant rushing around, not even allowing time to eat or sleep.
    “And you think and talk, give opinions and give orders, but you do not do anything,” she responded, and in this way they opened a discussion that they were to repeat hundreds of times, give or take a few words, during the years they lived together on the isle.
    When practically everything was unpacked and they were close to having the house ready, she discovered, together with other pieces of linen in the bottom of the trunk, the saintly bedsheet, the one with the matrimonial keyhole in the center. Far from Orizaba, from Doña Carlota, from the Ten Commandments and the Seven Sacraments, Alicia had completely forgotten about it. Seeing it again made her feel guilty, but at this point, she thought it absurd to start using it, after so many nights without it.
    For a moment she thought of giving it to the camp followers, but changed her mind, considering its fine embroidery. In the end she decided to use it in the dining room as a tablecloth for big occasions, placing a heavy pheasant centerpiece to cover the hole.

Clipperton, 1908

    A FTER BEING ANCHORED for three days outside the reef barrier and passively allowing the breakers to jolt her at will, the Corrigan II , relieved of her cargo, set sail for the return to Acapulco. From the dock, Ramón Arnaud saw her depart. The gentleman’s agreement he had made with his superior and advisor, Colonel Avalos, was that every two months, three