STORY OF THE MONTH
The Modigliani Girl
Struck by the beauty of a young girl, a man is apt to do just about anything, something often dangerous, at times something foolish. Early that spring I had joined a small tour boat sailing out of Albermarle Island in the famous Galapagos Archipelago. The cruise was of interest from the beginning; the remote Galapagos Islands are home to some of the strangest and most beautiful wild creatures in the world. Of equal interest were several of the crew and guests gathered upon the decks of our old cabin cruiser, the Lobo del Mar (“Sea Wolf”).
Our guide was named Fernando after another volcanic island in another sea far, far away from the Galapagos Islands. He told me he had grown up sailing the waters of the South Pacific with his father. Fernando was a handsome young man; I guessed he was about 20 years old. He wore a mop of dark hair, cut straight round his tanned and scarred shoulders. He was healthy and strong, though no taller than most of the other islanders I had met. His eyes were the sole feature that betrayed an otherwise healthy and vigorous appearance. They were blood-red always, and I learned it was a reaction to the rich, salty waters of the Humboldt current which swept up the South American coast from Chile to Ecuador and out past the Galapagos.
Fernando’s responsibilities as guide aboard the Lobo del Mar were simple enough; to lead guests about the islands on their daily walks, and make sure all were well fed and looked after. Despite his requisite proximity the young islander was possessed of a most peculiar attitude toward his charges. Often his mind seemed far, far away from the task at hand. Some aboard the Lobo del Mar thought him lazy and shiftless but I believe he was preoccupied, perhaps by some distant mystery which he would not confess. I came to consider Fernando’s nature not unusually cool but hauntingly appropriate given the surreal other-worldliness of the islands we toured. The beauty and solitude of the Galapagos would seed the most infertile imagination.
In contrast to this mysterious detachment our guide also displayed a sense of unrivaled spontaneity, and unparalleled excitability. At times a state of hyperactivity gripped him like a fever and Fernando would bend his mind and body to perform the maddest of acts for anyone who might care to serve witness. These two sides of the young islander- the one quiet, the other quixotic- were surely the result of his many years of motoring about those strange islands.
Among the guests aboard the Lobo del Mar was a German girl who reminded me of some paintings by the Italian born artist, Amedeo Modigliani. The girl’s name was Claudia, and she was only a little older than our guide. She was beautiful and unlike any girl I have seen before or since. Like Fernando, there was also something magical and mysterious about her, some fermenting power deep within that was only hinted at by the classic beauty of her outer shell. She was tall, lean and finely toned. I often caught myself contemplating her wonderful form far more thoughtfully than some of the wildlife we came across during our cruise.
Atop her elegant, linear form and resting upon a columnar, gently curving neck was one of the loveliest heads there could be. Her dark auburn hair was forever combed back from a delicately sculpted face and held in a single braid. All was smooth and fresh like a perfect round apple. Her big blue eyes, as transparent as a spring morning sky, were bright and alive. Her small nose rested above a pair of full crimson lips always slightly parted as though a kiss had just brushed and left them. I longed to know the secret of that kiss, but I settled for the shy smile she occasionally presented me with.
Claudia was unaware of the condition she aroused in her admirers, and I was not the only male aboard the Lobo del Mar affected by her presence. She was as innocent as a doe, I believed, and she seemed not simply a girl, for that made her too common, but a rare and fine creature from another time and place, perhaps a flower even. She was at home in those islands, healthy and vigorous without pretension yet as equally adrift in her thoughts as our guide, Fernando. Nothing she could have done would have checked the extraordinary effect she had on him above all others, including myself.
Of course, I was not surprised that this innocence and untamed wildness should awaken our sleepy guide from his own moribund delirium. He may have encountered other beautiful women in his station aboard the Lobo del Mar though, witnessing the effect Claudia had on him, I believe no other girl had ever stormed and captured his heart’s imagination quite as much as she. The ambition our guide lacked was suddenly provided and provoked by the presence of whom I now remember simply as the Modigliani Girl.
One morning in James Bay, below the island of Santiago, Fernando awoke to the full power of his passion. A wet landing was arranged via the Lobo del Mar’s motor launch and our group shuffled through the warm, shallow surf onto a stunning black sand beach. The tame and rounded outline held only a few hills formed by the craters of the long extinct volcanoes which had once been the greater part of her land mass. Up over the layered strata of the hardened igneous dunes we followed what remained of a settlement road scraped out of this truly merciless environment. Upon a lonely bluff lay two broken metal containers abandoned by the most permanent of the island’s few settlers, a group of Norwegians who had operated a salt-works plant on the barren island many years before. The skeleton of a storehouse stood over the silent bay, evidence all of the harsh permanence of the landscape and the impossibility of establishing any lasting enterprise there.
Beyond the naked bluff the path led along a ragged, ripped field of hard basalt lava. We entered this dry and parched sea of petrified rock and discovered a collection of pools and caves that were home and playground to a small colony of peaceful sea lions. We wandered about the cool shade of the caves for some time and swam with the tame sea lions. At one end of a deep pool, we admired a low geyser produced solely by the swell and tide of the sea and a natural funnel punctured in the new black rock.
Here, above a white and bubbling kettle, was where our hero chose to make his stand. Beneath his bare feet the water coursed and cursed deep within the narrow rock pool. With the ebb of each sea swell the water rose furiously and violently. It overflowed the bowl and extended towards us as if to snare and drag us back into its sharp and foaming jaws.
I stood above the precipice and observed Fernando’s foolish bravado. I found myself alarmed, and envious too, I admit, of our guide’s proposal to dive into this belching pool and swim beneath the rocky landscape to a point of exit some distance from his audience, as he boasted he would do. A fluttering female contingent gathered about the posturing islander. Claudia dramatically represented their collective concern with a few well-timed and appropriate cries and gestures.
I drew near the pit and watched the water rise and fall. It was certainly a furious business down there. The rising water was forever white and impenetrable to the eye. Our swim earlier had indeed confirmed the existence of underground channels through the rocks. It might be possible, I allowed, for someone to enter the wet tunnel from the sea lions den and rise up with the tide to escape the maddening cascade. But to traverse this avenue from the other direction, by timing the pool’s ebb in order to swim out and away with the sea’s retreating current, seemed utterly preposterous. My thoughts were echoed by those around me, and we hovered nervously about the pit in animated confusion.
Young Claudia was at once fascinated by the masculine stand of our young guide and, at the same, alarmed and distressed by the peril and danger his bravery foreshadowed. Like a frightened doe she flitted about her peak beside the pool and made every effort to dissuade Fernando from the course he appeared bent on following. Nothing however would contain the young man. Claudia’s attention, if anything, only appeared to inspire him further in his private ambition.
In an instant, before another word could be spoken, Fernando jumped into the ferocious pool and disappeared from sight. He looked every bit like a convicted madman. The white water literally swallowed him whole, and he was gone.
We shook in fear. Some gathered and stood transfixed above the cauldron while others fled to the opposite side of the precipice in dire hope that Fernando would reappear soon thereafter. Silence and shock gripped us all and the seconds marched by like hammer blows in our ears. I could only imagine the frenzied shock and violent struggle that must have embraced our poor friend far below us in the dark chasm.
A minute, two, and then three passed and I was forced to abandon all hope for our guide’s safety. I removed my shoes and took a diving mask from my satchel. If nothing else, I decided I would enter the cave from the second pool and seek to extricate Fernando’s body from the sharp rock where it was probably pinned. I stood poised above the silent pool and took a last look at the aghast expressions of my fellow travelers.
The sound of a low whistle reached me, and I turned where I stood. There, emerging from behind a low wall of lava rock in the near distance, came our smiling guide. He had returned not from the pool we expected but from another, more distant one. This was no hoax. Fernando had indeed traversed some underwater chasm as he said he would and the only hint of fraud lay in his obvious knowledge of where he would emerge, and in the resultant mixture of shock, delight and surprise that animated the faces of his stunned audience.
Smiling to myself, as much in relief as anything else, I awarded Fernando a silent vote of approval. The girls flocked and fluttered about him, and for a moment he looked nothing less than a young Polynesian god. Perhaps his life was not so cruelly unbalanced after all, I thought. The strange islander led us quietly away from the deathly pool. Claudia, the Modigliani Girl, walked close by his side back towards the beach and our anchored boat, the Lobo del Mar.
The End