Wish You Were Here(11)

By the time I’ve walked for twenty minutes, it’s nearly sunset. The jaunty arms of the cacti re-form in the low light into strangers following me; when iguanas scissor in front of me I jump. I should turn around before it’s too dark for me to find my way back. I am about to resign myself to going to bed hungry when I see a little shed further up the road. I squint, but I can’t quite make out the sign.

By the time I can read it, I know that it’s not a restaurant or a convenience store. CENTRO DE CRIANZA DE TORTUGAS GIGANTES. There is a translation in English—GIANT TORTOISE BREEDING CENTER—and just to be extra clear, a picture of a tortoise hatching from an egg.

There is no gate, so I wander into the open-air courtyard. The main building is closed up for the night (or longer?), but a horseshoe of enclosures surrounds me. Each pen is gated by a concrete wall that is a few feet high—certainly big enough for me to lean over, but too high for the tortoises to escape.

I approach one wall and find myself face-to-face with a prehistoric-looking tortoise. Its slitted eyes stare at me as it moves closer on padded feet and stretches its neck up from the hump of its shell. I look at its flat head and dinosaur skin, the black ridges of its toes, its Voldemort nose. It opens its mouth and sticks out a spear of tongue.

Delighted, I lean down on my elbows and watch it turn away, loping across the dusty ground toward another tortoise in the distance. With lumbering underwater movements, it crawls up the shell of the second tortoise, anchoring her so they can mate. The male I’ve been watching curves his neck toward his partner, tendons stretching. His thick arms look like they are covered in chain mail. He grunts, the only sound he’ll make in his life.

“You go, buddy,” I murmur, and I turn away to give them privacy.

In the other enclosures are hundreds of tortoises of varying sizes. They look, heaped, like a collection of army helmets. Some sleep, some are surprisingly limber. Others seem world-weary, as they crawl out of a puddle electric green with algae, or maneuver stalks of food into their mouths. Even the smallest ones remind me of old men, with the wrinkled skin of their throats and bald pates.

In one of the enclosures, a few of the tortoises are chewing on apples. The apples are small and green and seem to have fallen from a tree beyond the concrete pen. I watch the reptiles use their powerful jaws to grind.

My stomach rumbles, and I glance at the tree.

I’m not the kind of person who eats berries off random trees; I’m a New Yorker, for God’s sake, and most of nature looks like a hazard to me. But if the tortoises are eating these, then they have to be safe, right?

I can’t quite reach the fruit. The branches that hang into the pen have already been stripped by the greedy tortoises, so I find myself climbing onto the little wall to grasp an apple.

“Cuidado!”

I turn, almost toppling into the tortoise pen with surprise. The dark has settled like a net, casting shadows, so I can’t see who’s calling to me. I hesitate, and then turn back to the apple tree.

My fingers have just brushed against the skin of the apple when I am yanked off the wall and lose my balance, then find myself sprawled on the dusty ground with a man looming over me. He is yelling in Spanish, and I cannot see his face in the dark. He leans down and grabs my wrist.

I wonder why I assumed it was safe to wander an unfamiliar island by myself.

I wonder if I escaped a pandemic at home only to get attacked here.

I start fighting. When I land a good punch in his ribs, he grunts, and holds me tighter.

“Don’t hurt me,” I cry out. “Please.”

He twists my wrist, and for the first time I feel the burn in my fingertips where they brushed against the skin of the apple. They are blistered and red.

“Too late,” he says in perfect English. “You already did that yourself.”





TWO


I scramble to my feet, cradling my hand. My fingertips throb.

“They’re poisonous to the touch,” the man says. “The apples.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You should have,” he mutters. “There are signs everywhere.”

Poison apples, like a fairy tale. Except my prince is stuck in a hospital in New York City and the evil witch is a six-foot-tall galapague?o with anger management issues. I look at the tortoises, still blissfully feasting, and he follows my gaze. “You’re not a tortoise,” he says, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking.

By now my skin feels like it’s on fire. “How poisonous?” I ask, starting to panic. Do I need to go to the hospital?

Is there even a hospital?

He takes my hand and peers down at my fingers. He has dark hair and darker eyes and he is wearing running shorts and a sweaty tank. “It’ll go away, the burn, the blisters. Soak in cold water if you have to.” Then his eyes narrow on my breasts. I yank my hand away and fold my arms over my chest. “Where did you get that?”

“Get what?”

“That shirt.”

“I borrowed it,” I say. “My luggage got lost.”

His scowl carves deeper lines in his face. “You’re on vacation,” he mutters. “Of course you are.”

He says this like it is a great personal affront to him that I, an outsider, am on Isabela. For a country whose main source of revenue is tourism, this doesn’t exactly feel like a warm welcome.