In spite of the hellish oppressive heat and the ill-tempered breezes, Arnaud and his Clipperton men persisted in their construction frenzy. After the soldiers’ houses, they continued with a Decauville track brought from Acapulco. They labored hand in hand with Schultz and his workers, and they managed to make a toylike train, which hauled its row of small, uncovered wagons on a track that extended from the soft mounds of guano on the north of the isle and followed the eastern shore down to the storehouse, where the cargo was dried and processed, next to the dock.
Then came the reconstruction of the lighthouse on top of the big rock on the southern coast. The old one had an obsolete mechanism, already in total disrepair. Arnaud restored it by installing new prisms and burners on the old base. He ordered the construction of six sections of stairs, ten steps each, to civilize the steep ascent to the lighthouse, which had been a suicidal enterprise due to the slippery rock. He filled the tank with oil, and one starry and moonless night, he lit the burners.
Down below, men, women, and children were sitting on the beach in mystical silence around a fire they had built to drive away the mosquitoes. Behind them they had made pavilions with their rifles, leaning them against one another in threes and fours. They saw the big beacon light up and remained there for several hours, staring as if hypnotized at the pallid light as it turned. This was an important occasion. They no longer were a speck lost in the big nothingness. Now they were offering to the world an assertive testimoniaclass="underline" the Clipperton lighthouse, a little candle flickering in the midst of the infinite darkness where ocean and sky merged.
That night, at the foot of the lighted beacon, Lieutenant Arnaud commanded peremptorily that the light never be allowed to grow dark, and right then named one of his trusted men as the lighthouse keeper. He was a black soldier from the state of Colima named Victoriano Alvarez. So that he could attend to his duties with the necessary zeal, Arnaud assigned as his living quarters a small sheltered cabin at the base of the big rock. It was, in fact, a cave inside the rock, and he adapted its interior and added a log-cabin facade. The soldiers called it “the lighthouse lair.”
For Victoriano Alvarez, living there meant being isolated from his comrades, but in compensation, the appointment invested him with a special importance, an almost priestly aura. He became the man of the light, the guide to lost ships, the point of contact between Clipperton and what lay beyond.
The following weeks were also filled with hard work. The dock was reinforced, and a saltworks was constructed on the low cliffs so as to keep a permanent source of salt. Pig stalls and chicken coops were built so that the animals would not be running around free. Strict regulations were decreed so that human beings, no matter what their ages, had to use latrines for their physiological needs, unlike before, when people relieved themselves wherever the need arose.
As for feeding the troops, Ramón put an end to the anarchy of each one on his own and established a food store. There, under his strict control and according to family size, proportional rations of corn, beans, chiles, rice, coffee, flour, cereals, and dried beef were distributed. On Saturday mornings the soldiers were paid, and since there were no cantinas for them to get drunk, they had the luxury of buying in the store even items that, given the conditions, could be considered nonessential, such as soap, condiments, and beer. The stealing of supplies, common at the beginning, was curtailed by means of severe punishments imposed by Arnaud, ranging from whipping in the worst cases, to digging ditches under the noonday sun.
Next to the store, Ramón set up a pharmacy with surgical supplies, disinfectants, and remedies. Guided by the medical dictionaries he had brought from the continent, he personally turned apothecary first, then medic after gaining some confidence, and finally, when circumstances demanded it, surgeon. Clipperton offered him the opportunity to act in the profession he had wanted to follow but could not.
During the first months he limited himself to prescribing methylene blue gargles for sore throats, gentian violet for scrapes, magnesium sulfate enemas for stomachaches, ipecacuanha powder as a laxative. He learned that arandula vertiginosa, better known as agua zafia, was incomparable, if properly administered, to combat heartburn, lack of appetite, and lack of sexual drive as well. However, if the patient ingested more drops than prescribed, he would die in a matter of hours, his lips purple and blistering. Agua zafia came in small blue flasks that Ramón carefully kept under lock and key, given its lethal properties.
If a case presented crab bites or Portuguese man-of-war burns, he ordered that a child be brought to pee on the affected skin. For the common cold, he rubbed hot glycerine on the torso and wrapped it in paper strips. As the glycerine grew cold, it hardened under the paper and the grippe victim had to remain stiff and wrapped up like a mummy for hours. Later he also took care of serious wounds: knife fights among the men who became irascible and desperate in the island prison, or severe blows among the camp followers because of jealousy. In this way, Ramón learned to dispense first aid and got his training for what he had to deal with months later: childbirth, epidemics, and death.
Taking care of the vegetable garden became a ritual. In the middle of the bone-dry Clipperton terrain, the thousand square feet of black, moist soil speckled with green was a mirage. It was weeded and sprinkled with the tenderness granted to a firstborn child, and in the afternoons everybody, even those dedicated to other tasks, stopped by for a while before dusk to watch its progress. They stood in groups, next to the furrows, and voiced their alarm if they saw a worm among the cabbage leaves, or else clapped for the green carrot tops beginning to come out. This daily habit turned the garden into a meeting place serving all the functions of a town’s main plaza.
The soldiers spent all their time growing greens, carving chairs, taking care of the pigs, counting bales of guano, while military discipline was reduced to a minimum: close order and salute to the flag at dawn, cleaning of weapons and uniforms, and exercises within the limited space available. The practice of trotting around the isle was discontinued because the broken coral was destroying their boots and huaraches, and there were no replacements. Defense was limited to the rotating guard duty, day and night, at the lighthouse and the brigades of two or three men who made the rounds to patrol the order of the community. All of this troubled Ramón, and he told his assistant, Secundino Angel Cardona.
“Rather than a military outpost, this seems like an artisans’ commune.”
“Don’t worry about it, Captain,” Lieutenant Cardona responded, “here the coral reefs are in charge of the true defense. If an enemy ship approaches with intentions of invading, it will soon become firewood against the reefs. If the ship passes that barrier, then we fire at it from the lighthouse until we run out of ammunition, because there isn’t very much. If, in spite of all that, the enemy disembarks, we’ll engage them in hand-to-hand combat. And if they are too many for us, then the Faceless One will take us out.”
“That might sound absurd, but it’s really the only possible strategy,” Arnaud agreed. “You are right, it’s no use fretting any more about it.”
And life went on, full and bearable enough, within that penny-sized universe. The tremendous amount of work rendered results, and the people’s measure of well-being lay in simple things. The inhabited part of the isle did not look either like a slum or like a mound of bird droppings, and the first harvest of the vegetable garden was celebrated with a large salad shared by all. It consisted of lettuce, onions, radishes, and turnips, and Arnaud himself prepared a dressing of mayonnaise, the recipe for which he had inherited from Doña Carlota.