The Island of Last Truth Read Online Free PDF Page B

The only ones who come close to here from time to time are the ones that belong to
Solimán
.”
    Prendel remembers the boat moving away, the name painted on the stern.
    â€œThey could have rescued you. If they find me, they’ll kill me for sure, but you . . . ”
    â€œThey think I’m dead. Drowned at the bottom of the Atlantic. And that’s what they have to think. You’re either with them or you’re against them.”
    â€œI don’t know if I understand.”
    â€œYou don’t need to understand,” says Nelson Souza, while he presses on his injured ankle with a grimace of pain. “All you have to know is that if you try to make signals from the island so they find us . . . I’ll have to kill you. It will be me who decides when and how we leave here, is that clear?”
    Prendel nods because he realizes that the tone Souza is using leaves no room for questions or complaints. He is too tired to argue. He looks around him. All his priorities are changing. What was important before is no longer so. What wasn’t, will be. A man doesn’t know what it costs to revise the list of his values until he has to do it. He had been somewhat used to it, given the changes involved in leaving the land to go to sea, but . . . this was totally different. This was land in the middle of the sea. It was like sailing without managing to move from the place. It was terrible. He looks back at the man in front of him.
    Nelson Souza is thin but strong, tall, with thick black hair. Now he’s got a beard of a few days. Prendel reckons that Souza is about his own age. He tries to ignore the threat. He doesn’t want to ask the reason for it; he knows he won’t answer. He points at his wound.
    â€œIt hurts, right? If you’ll allow me, I can take a look at it. I’m a doctor. A doctor with no instruments or medication.”
    â€œA doctor? Hey, then I did well in saving you. A doctor and a pirate: clearly all we’re missing is a priest and we could be a bad joke, couldn’t we?” Nelson smiles. Prendel imitates him. Souza keeps talking. “I have some medicine. A first-aid kit. I’ve been taking antibiotics.”
    â€œThe surprised look on Prendel’s face forces Nelson to give some explanation.
    â€œI didn’t fall into the water empty-handed. I fell prepared. I was hoping to fall. It was lucky you shot me. Thanks.”
    Prendel smiles, though with bitterness. He misses Frank a lot, a guy who liked this kind of situation. Two men alone, shipwrecked on a desert island, and one thanks the other for having fired a bullet into his ankle. Frank was a guy who liked westerns and war films.
    â€œMove your leg closer to the fire.” He says it in an authoritative tone. The other man obeys. Mathew uncovers the wound and examines it. “It should have had stitches. Not now, it’s too late.”
    He is lying on the sand. Prendel feels the dampness of the ground. He is exhausted. He looks at the time. It is two o’clock in the morning, but in the situation he’s in, time means nothing.
    â€œToo much light, for my liking. I like to sleep in the dark,” he comments calmly, almost as if this were any other night. At the moment, he is more struck by his having survived than by being in an open-air prison.
    â€œThe firelight will go out on its own, shortly. The moonlight . . . will take a little longer.”
    Souza has spent almost two days alone. He wasn’t expecting anyone. Prendel gathers that his presence is a relief, and for that reason he wasn’t capable of letting him die. He closes his eyes and hears Souza going away. His footsteps, slightly unequal in intensity because of his wound, move away surely over the sand. Prendel remembers Frank and Katy. He realizes he should have ordered them to throw themselves overboard the instant the pirate demanded it. Now he knows they too would have been saved. And having them with