“Help!” Alicia heard herself shout, to her surprise.
This first shout was like a door opening in her throat, letting out all the hopes she had held back, after so many years of stifling them, of not giving them wings. Now she, too, was running, screaming, laughing, and praying, kissing her children.
“This is the real thing, Ramón. This is really it!” she repeated, looking upward, more in an effort to convince herself than to inform her husband.
The ship was closer now, and she could see the flag: it was the U.S. flag. A sharp panic stunned her: What if nobody on board saw them and the ship went back? It was not a Mexican ship, and therefore it would probably just cruise by. Unless they could manage to make it stop.
“Let’s yell loud and clear, so they hear us!” she told the children, and she herself put her whole soul into each yell.
In the furor of all the clamor, Alicia tore off the saintly bedsheet she had wrapped around herself. Naked like her children, with Angel on her back, and brimming with the joy of her renewed desire to live, she waved the white sheet in the air.
“You rag, better be good for something,” she commanded. “Make them see us!”
High Seas, Aboard the Gunboat Yorktown, 1916
IT WAS STILL AS DARK AS night at six fifteen on Wednesday, 18 July when Captain H. P. Perril came to the bridge. He was hit by a milky curtain that, at first, he could not decipher as fog or as the nebulae in his still-sleepy brain. Nobody on board the Yorktown had been able to sleep due to the choppy seas and the extreme heat. A few of the men had tried to sleep on deck, until various scattered but recurrent rainstorms forced them to go back in. At four o’clock, even the captain had managed some light sleep, which had just become deep sleep by the time he was awakened, as usual, at six.
Slowly he began to connect with the real world: a strong wind was blowing from the southwest, and an impatient sea jolted the ship without mercy or rhythm. He asked the helmsman if he could see anything, and he answered, “Only the fog, sir.” There was no visibility until nine fifty, when the lookout shouted that he had sighted land.
“That boy has an eagle eye,” commented Perril, uselessly trying to see it.
Not until fifteen minutes later was he able to see a gray shadow in the distance. As they got closer, the shadow darkened and took first the tall aspect of a ship’s sails, and later that of a castle. It was Clipperton, no doubt. It was the big rock on the southeast coast, according to description. Captain Perril felt uneasy. Neither he nor his men had entertained any desire to sail there. Before they left San Francisco, however, Admiral Fullam, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, had informed them that Clipperton was to be included in their itinerary. They were in the middle of the world war and there were rumors that the Germans, taking advantage of the tense relationship between the Mexican and U.S. governments, had installed radio stations or submarine bases along the Pacific coast of Mexico. The gunboat Yorktown had to engage in a meticulous surveillance trip.
It was a monotonous, routine job, and his crew was anxious to be in action, so he received the news reluctantly. Before the gunboat parted from the continent, they had determined their ports of call carefully. Admiral Fullam had placed the quadrant on top of the map and traced an appropriate itinerary from Honolulu to Panama. Clipperton was just underneath the black line.
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.
Taxco, Today
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.