It was his
custom once a year to climb that old wooden arduous stairway—one-hundred and
sixty-steps, from the foot of Cape Horn, to the lower part of its near
fifteen-hundred foot summit, where resided a little red house, with a little
red chapel in the background, where a retired General of the Chilean Army
resided with his wife, Adriana De la
Vega de Pinochet, to inspect the premises, and let the world
know, that the last part of Tierra del Fuego mountains, the renowned Tierra del
Fuego, of Patagonia, in spirit and in rule, the
island of Cape Horn, and its waterway belonged to Chile; thus, the
Chilean Emissary Diego Medina, who had offices in Punta Arenas and Santiago
with his entourage stayed only long enough on that windswept, forsaken island in the Drake
Passage, only long enough for his picture to be taken and to say hello to his
old friend, Jorge Pinochet (who had
been close friends with Lieutenant Colonel Luis Altamirano, who had become
president in 1925, of Chile, and his associates)
to legitimately say, he was there in his person. And then off he’d be (it was a time when there was a sense of a de
facto government governing the land of that region, one not ordained by law but
one established by practice, and considered accepted by norm).
It is
that Jorge Pinochet, had died as every man must die, departing this world, but
in his case, in quiet footsteps, adown in his bed, no longer the great erect
clinched fisted general he once was, cursed by destiny, flung over to the
elements of nature, he died of double-pneumonia—not in the wicked battles he
had dreamed of between Peru or another enemy of old, passing forever into the
subduing winds and passage of time, and into the un-witnessed hands of fate,
and cast into the great waters of the Drake Passage, where ten-thousand sailors
had perished before him, and eight-hundred ships had sunk to its ocean
floor—with its long avenging triumph over the immortal strait that walled two
great oceans.
It was Old Widow Adriana now, who seemed
inseparable from this old and desolate shelter on top of the summit of Cape
Horn, doing daily what she always did, her nominal duties, as if nothing had
happened. Upon the next visit by the Emissary, with the scrupulous good
manners, he had always shown for General Pinochet, (retired, and now deceased) he had expected for her to depart this God
Forsaken place for a more comfortable residence and life, and an admirable
pension, in Punta Arenas or Santiago, or perhaps back to her homeland in
Seville, Spain.
“Widow Adriana, why do you hesitate to
come?” questioned Diego.
“Not so,” she answered, “this here will
be my tomb, as it was for my husband, I will not leave,” answered the Widow.
“Be that as it may, I must then force
you to leave, this is no place for a lady of your rank!” he proclaimed, handing
her some currency, for her husband’s past duties.
“My dear old friend” commented Adriana,
“Never, never shall I leave this place, even if you take me away, will I return
somehow!”
‘Awe,’ what a contemptuous woman he
thought, stubborn as the day is long, nerves like the old hero of Seville,
Hercules.
“Okay,” he unwittingly said, “be
scattered here and about, if you wish old fool, I shall leave you to your tomb,
and isolation, to the empty world that surrounds you here, to visit the ghosts
if you can find any, I fear for you and have pity on you—and that is enough
scorning for me on you, therefore, I will see you in a year’s time, if indeed,
the Good Lord is willing!”
So he murmured, and left, and as he
looked back there was a haunting about her; on the other hand, he now had a
watchman in this case a watchwoman, for the premises, one who if anything, by
and large, was faithful, and devoted to her countrymen, although she’d be in
utter loneliness surely in due time.
In brief, it was at this juncture, the
few figures in her life had disappeared, but a strange thing happened soon
after that last visitation by the Emissary, the forbidden dynasty of the
infamous, Drake Passage, the sailors of the graveyard, entrenched in watery
graves, in old ships eight-hundred old ships, ten-thousand dead, now shadows, at the bottom of the passage, under a gibbous
moon, and starlight night, four miles deep into the depths of the ocean, the
Drake Passage, long buried, dating back
a thousand-years, came to visit the Widow (so
she wrote in her diary; yet some in future time would proclaim her
crazed).
It happened something like this: she
lived long in her own region of facts and figures, writing notes and
information into her diary of the regular appearance of her guests, composed
into strange tales, she even gave names to the sailors who visited her, names
that would in time prove to be registered names, official names of those long
lost at sea, forgotten by time. She had even proclaimed in one journal note to
have talked directly with Sir Francis Drake, whom she said often, visited the
area—long dead, and the Drake Passage named after him. She summon them by having by her side, a pan
of water, that reflected—she said—their shadows mingled, and she’d beckon to
them, to join her. And most often they did, she said; thus, learning of long
forgotten tales that never would have been told, like this one.
And so it was, upon her death, they
found her diary, attesting to this very strange story indeed, and the Emissary
buried her according to her wishes, to be with her husband, and upon completion
of the burial, he simple said to his entourage, “Now that we’ve buried her with
dignity, let us be done with her, we have much work to do with the living.”
No: 687/10-2010 (Reedited: 6-2012)
Dedicated to the Watchman, or Watchwoman (At Cape
Horn)
