“Gather all the women and children at the vegetable patch, and have them wait there until we see what is going on. Ask the men to do a head count and make sure nobody is missing. Where do you think the people could be best protected? In the guano shed next to the dock?”
“That’s correct, sir,” Cardona answered in his most energetic military tone. “That is the sturdiest structure on the isle.”
“Besides, it’s on a higher ground and solidly built on pylons, so it will not be dragged away by floodwaters. Have someone take these food supplies there and a few barrels of drinking water. And make sure domestic animals are also sheltered.”
“Two by two, just like Noah’s ark,” offered the lieutenant with a childish smile, seeming both excited and amused by the prospect of a great commotion.
While Cardona and the soldiers corralled the pigs, chickens, and dogs in an improvised pen at one corner of the shed, Arnaud went to the lighthouse to speak to the soldier in charge, Victoriano Alvarez.
“Turn on the beam, Victoriano,” he ordered, “and keep it on at all costs. If things get rough, tie yourself to the rock, or do whatever you can, but don’t let the light go out.”
Arnaud joined Cardona and the other men in time to see how a sudden gust of wind whipped against the palm trees, folding their trunks almost at right angles and abruptly turning the fronds upside down as if it were pulling a bunch of reluctant young ladies by the hair.
“Look at that! It’s the hurricane!” shouted Cardona, pointing toward it. “Here it comes already!”
“Well, let it come,” said Arnaud. “Let it blow if it must but once and for all, because this dead calm is driving us nuts.”
The unexpected gust of wind vanished and the palm trees recovered their composure, but the dark line that up to a minute before had seemed to rest on the horizon quickly covered in a few instants half the distance that separated it from Clipperton, showing its flying halo of leaves and other suspended objects being buffeted by the wind.
“It’s time for the women and the children to get into the shed,” shouted Arnaud. Don’t let them leave until the storm is over.”
At the mere mention of the word, as if it had been an invocation, the storm fiercely let loose all its force. As the jets of water hit them, the reality of the situation dawned, and the events, restrained up to then, came upon them in such rapid succession and with such violence that in spite of having been warned, they were taken by surprise.
Standing at the entrance of the guano shed — well constructed by Schultz during the company’s golden age — Ramón helped the women in. With children hanging from their skirts, they came carrying baskets overflowing with serapes, pieces of cloth, scapularies, pictures of saints, kitchen pots, metates to grind corn: every imaginable thing that deserved to be saved from the deluge.
Ramón saw his wife and children coming in the middle of the group. As Ramoncito ran to him, eyes round identical to his, and eyelashes dripping water, he picked him up and tightly hugged his fragile frame, like a little bird’s.
“Daddy,” the child shouted in his ear, “the winged horses went mad and started to gallop in the skies.”
“Who told you that?”
“Doña Juana told me, and it’s true.”
Alicia’s hair was loose and wet, and it stuck to her face and body. She was carrying baby Olga on one arm, and with the other she was pulling a large trunk, helped by Altagracia Quiroz, who pushed it from behind.
Ramón quickly put his child down and lifted the trunk.
“You are always doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment,” he told Alicia, but she did not understand at all.
“What are you saying?”
“What the heck do you have there?”
“My wedding dress, my best clothes, and my jewelry,” Alicia shouted back.
“Why do you need them now?”
“The last thing I need is to lose these things to the wind,” she said, now without straining her voice, more to herself than to Ramón.
He took the trunk inside and ran out again to help a woman whom another gust of wind had thrown into one of the rivers of rain running everywhere on the isle. He did not know how or where he caught her, a round, wet, soft, and difficult mass who held desperately to his legs, causing him to fall also. Finally he was able to drag her through the mud and bring her in. Through the existing confusion, Arnaud then looked at the back of the shed and in the semidarkness managed to see Alicia’s silhouette, placing the baby on a wheelbarrow she had found in the shed.
Looking at her, he felt a tight lump in his throat. He had to refrain from going to help her, to dry her hair with a towel, to tell her, “Don’t worry, everything will be all right,” and to seek the shelter of her embrace, quietly hiding from the storm and from the unmanageable situation that had fallen on his shoulders.
What I have to do is go for my men, he thought as if waking up, and waved Alicia a good-bye that she didn’t see.
He left the shed to fulfill his duty, clinging to the walls of neighboring houses and without knowing exactly in which direction to go. He was trying body and soul not to be dragged by the elements when an airborne sharp object hit him on the forehead and knocked him backward. He lay on the ground, his eyes blinded and his mind taken over by a burning pain that reached to every corner of his brain. After he had been lying there a while, stunned, the first thought that came to his mind was about Gustav Schultz.
Where could that German fellow be now? he wondered. Maybe he could tell me how long we can expect this to last.
He tried to get up, but the pain from his wound did not let him. Feeling the warm flow of blood collecting over his right eye, then dripping lazily to the ground, he managed to drag himself up against a wall for some protection, and he lay there, looking at how the world was being transformed while darkness kept closing in around him.
He saw an intermittent point of light in the dark sky and knew that the soldier in the lighthouse was doing his duty. Clouds in the sky were dissolving as they flitted by in vertiginous succession. Next to him a floor beam, still nailed down, vibrated incessantly, resisting the windstorm’s attempt to pull it out. He saw zinc planks, chairs, and wooden beams go by, surely on their way to crash down somewhere in the distance. Slowly turning his stunned head toward the sea, he saw instead mountains of solid water rushing toward the isle and threatening to engulf it. He noticed that the heat that had tormented him in the morning had dissipated and that now freezing gusts of wind against his soaked clothes were making him shiver.
I have to move away from here, he thought. Here I am going to drown, or freeze. I am going to die, I must do something. We’re not going to get out alive from this one. Where is everybody? Where is that German fellow so I can ask him what to do?
He decided to give his wounded head a few more minutes of rest. It was then that he saw a large, imprecise object rolling toward him and making a loud, harsh noise.
“It’s the Pianola,” Ramón said to himself. “My whole house must have flown out the window.”
Revived by his premonition, he was able to stand. The first thing he did was to move closer to the shed where the women and children were, and he was relieved to see it resisting the pounding of the hurricane. The effort of getting up made him nauseous but, in spite of that, he tried to walk toward his home with the intention of securing doors and windows.
He was digging his fingers into the rocks, into the palm tree trunks, into whatever was closest by, in order to advance. His body felt heavy like a sack of stones, the wound on his temple pulsated like a chronometer, and the wind, which had torn his shirt, ended up taking away whatever was left of it. It seemed to cost him an eternity to advance every inch.