Isle of Passion Read Online Free PDF Page B

whispered to each other, and one would stick her finger through the eyelet and touch the other’s cheek.
    “Peekaboo, guess who’s inside you!”
    Huddling close together like clandestine accomplices, they covered their mouths to contain their laughter, repeating as if it were a tongue twister the words that were taught to future brides being prepared for marriage: “We do this, O Holy of Holies, not because of our evil ways, nor for fornication, but to bring forth a child in your holy service”—and they competed to see who could say it fastest—“Do this, Holy O, to serve in your holy fornication, the holy vice of your holy son, Fornitio, venicio, holy servitio.”
    Her mother, Doña Petra, would cross herself at such heresies. But then, moving closer to them, she would get into the conversation and break the gap, risking an argument.
    “If ever, God forbid, a man is about to rape you and there is a gun within your reach, kill yourself before you are dishonored!”
    The girls would laugh.
    “You’re crazy, Mother, it would be better to shoot the man.”
    They doubled and redoubled a strand of thread and tacked it to the arch. The three of them took turns in their needlework, but Sarita had a tighter stitch than Alicia, and Esther’s was looser, and so the nightingales in the wedding dress were large and angular in some places, and smaller with fat wings in others. Their mother made them undo their work and start all over again. One day while embroidering they were eating cherry chocolate cordials and stained the lace. Hiding from Doña Petra, they washed it with hydrogen peroxide and salt.
    They would again bring the yarn over twice, insert the hook, and draw up a loop to make a double stitch while listening to their mother’s domestic advice.
    “For stomach pain, remember this. When you are in Clipperton, if you run out of your paregoric elixir, boil an avocado seed for fifteen minutes: that tea makes a good substitute.”
    The girls just laughed.
    “But the avocados will be gone before the elixir!”
    Yarn over twice, insert hook, draw up a loop, and the wedding date was approaching. One day a messenger arrived in Orizaba with a long necklace of gray pearls for the bride to be that her fiancé had sent her from Japan. The whole neighborhood found out about it and came over to admire the pearls. Alicia delighted in wearing them around her neck and went outside to the patio to do acrobatics and cartwheels with the servants’ children.
    That is how her life went. She would embroider her white dress and learn to cook rice on the big coal stove so it would not come out too salty or lumpy. When nobody noticed, she would lock herself up to read and reread alone her fiancé’s love letters and to answer them on small notepaper from her stationery set, taking great care in penning her round lowercase letters and large, elaborate capitals.
    Before writing to him she would review the latest news, the important happenings in Orizaba during his absence. A pregnant Indian who used to sell tortillas and tortillas chips in the market was gored in the belly by a cow. The woman was still alive, bleeding and screaming, and Alicia helped to take her to the Women’s Hospital, where they saved her and her baby. Another day, the satyr in the Santa Anita neighborhood was finally caught and hanged. He had raped fifteen girls, giving them the French venereal disease and getting all of them pregnant.
    In the end, Alicia would reject these stories because Ramón would not be interested, and she wrote only about her love for him, such as the card written in English that, years after the tragedy, appeared in a book about Clipperton by General Francisco L. Urquizo, which says exactly this on one side:
    Señor
    Ramón Arnaud
    Acapulco
    And on the other,
    I never forget you
    and I love you with
    all my soul, Alice .
    Orizaba, June 14, 1908
    A line in violet-colored ink springs up from the letter e in “Alice,” turns back and curls