The Island of the Day Before

by Umberto Eco

  "It is truly admirable, the number of things you know, doctor," the Knight said, answering the prayers of Roberto, who was about to say as much himself. "As if for your whole life you have done nothing but look for longitudes."

  Dr. Byrd's face, dotted with pale freckles, suddenly flushed. He filled his mug with beer, drained it without taking a breath. "Oh, a naturalist's curiosity. Actually, I would have no idea where to begin if I had to tell you our present position."

  "But..." Roberto thought he could speak up at this point. "By the tiller, I saw a chart on which—"

  "Oh, yes."—the doctor quickly recovered himself—"to be sure, a ship does not proceed at random. They prick the Card. They record the day, the direction of the needle and its declination, the direction of the wind, the hour of the clock on board, the miles traveled, the height of the sun and of the stars, and therefore the latitude, and from that they deduce a longitude. You will have seen sometimes at the poop a sailor throwing a rope into the sea with a little piece of wood attached to one end. It is the loch or, as some call it, the Dutchman's log. The rope is let out, knotted at intervals for measurement, then with a clock you can calculate how much time it takes to cover a given distance. In this way, if everything proceeds regularly, you can determine how many miles you have sailed from the last known meridian."

  "You see? There is a method!" Roberto said triumphantly, already knowing what the doctor would reply. That the loch is something that is used only because there is nothing better, since it tells us how far a ship has gone only if it is proceeding in a straight line. But since a ship goes as the winds choose, when the winds are not favoring, it must move now to starboard, now to port.

  "Sir Humphrey Gilbert," the doctor said, "more or less at the time of Mendaña, in the Terranova region, intending to proceed along the forty-seventh parallel, 'encountered winds always so scant,' winds—how shall I say it?—so lazy and frugal, that for a long time he sailed anywhere between the forty-first and the fifty-first, ranging over ten degrees of latitude, gentlemen, which would be as if an immense snake were to go from Naples to Portugal, first touching Le Havre with its head and Rome with its tail, then finding itself with its tail at Paris and its head at Madrid! So the deviations must be calculated before doing the sums, and one must be very careful—which a sailor never is. And you cannot have an astronomer ready at your side all day long. To be sure, estimates are possible, especially if you are following a familiar course and consider all the discoveries previously made by others. For this reason from the shores of Europe to those of the Americas the maps give meridians that are fairly reliable. And then, observation of the stars from land can produce some good results, and therefore we know the longitude of Lima. But even in this case, my friends," the doctor asked gaily, "what happens?" And he looked slyly at the other two. "It happens that this gentleman," and he tapped a finger on one of the maps, "places Rome on the twentieth degree east of the meridian of the Canaries, whereas this other," and he waved his finger as if to admonish paternally the other cartographer, "this other gentleman sets Rome at the fortieth degree! And this manuscript contains also the report of a very knowledgeable Fleming, who informs the King of Spain that there has never been agreement on the distance between Rome and Toledo, por los errores tan enormes, como se conoce por esta linea, que muestra la differencia de las distancias, et cetera et cetera.... And here is the line: if you fix the first meridian at Toledo (the Spanish always think they live at the center of the world), Mercator believes Rome is twenty degrees farther east, but for Tycho Brahe it is twenty-two, and almost twenty-five for Regiomontanus, and twenty-seven for Clavius, and twenty-eight for good old Ptolemy, and for Origanus thirty. All these errors, just to measure the distance between Rome and Toledo. Imagine what happens, then, on routes like this, where we are perhaps the first to reach certain islands, and the reports of other travelers are quite vague. And add that if a Dutchman has taken correct bearings, he will not tell them to the English, nor will they to the Spanish. On these seas the captain's nose counts most, as with his poor loch he calculates, say, that he is on the two-hundred-twentieth meridian, and perhaps he is thirty degrees ahead, or behind."

  "But then," the Knight suggested, "the man who found a way of calculating the meridians would be master of the oceans!"

  Byrd flushed again, stared to see if the Knight was speaking with some ulterior motive, and smiled, as if he would have liked to bite him. "Why do you not try, the two of you?"

  "Alas, I give up," Roberto said, holding out his hands in a gesture of surrender. And that evening the conversation ended amid hearty laughter.

  For many days Roberto did not consider it wise to steer the conversation again to the question of longitude. He changed the subject, and in order to do so he came to a brave decision. With his knife he wounded the palm of one hand. Then he bandaged it with strips of a shirt now worn threadbare by water and the winds. That evening he showed the wound to the doctor. "I am truly foolish. I had put my knife in my bag, unsheathed, and then as I was searching for something, I cut myself. And very painfully."

  Dr. Byrd examined the wound with the eye of a specialist, while Roberto prayed he would bring a basin of water to the table and dissolve some vitriol in it. Instead, Byrd merely said it did not seem serious and that Roberto should cleanse it well every morning. But by a stroke of luck the Knight came to the rescue: "Ah, here what is needed is the unguentum armarium!"

  "What the devil is that?" Roberto asked. And the Knight, as if he had read all the books Roberto knew, began praising the virtues of that substance. Byrd remained silent. After the Knight's superb throw, Roberto now cast the dice himself. "But those are old wives' tales! Like the story of the pregnant woman who saw her lover with his head cut off and then gave birth to a baby whose head was detached from his body. Or like the peasant wife who, to punish a dog that has soiled the kitchen, takes a hot coal and thrusts it into the feces, hoping the animal will feel the fire in his behind! Sir, no person of sense believes in these historiettes!"

  He had struck the right note, and Byrd could not remain silent. "Ah no, my dear sir, the story of the dog and his shit is quite true. I know a gentleman who resorted to the same measure when a spiteful rival shat on his doorstep, and I assure you the offender learned his lesson." Roberto chuckled as if the doctor were joking, and then led him, piqued, to supply further arguments. Which proved to be more or less the same as d'Igby's. But the doctor grew heated: "Ah yes, my dear sir, you who play the philosopher so much and despise the learning of a mere chirurgeon. I will even say, since it is of shit we are speaking, that a man with bad breath should keep his mouth open over a dung-pit, and he will be finally cured: the stink there is much stronger than that of his throat, and the stronger attracts and carries away the weaker."

  "Why, these are extraordinary revelations, Dr. Byrd, and I am awed by your learning!"

  "I can tell you still more. In England, when a man is bitten by a dog, the animal is killed, even if it is not rabid. It could become so, and the yeast of canine madness, remaining in the body of the person who was bit, would draw to itself the spirits of hydrophobia. Have you ever seen peasant women pour milk on embers? After it, they immediately throw on a handful of salt. Great wisdom of the vulgar! Milk, falling on the coals, is transformed into steam, and through the action of light and air, this steam, accompanied by the atoms of fire, spreads to the place where the cow that gave the milk is kept. Now the cow's udder is a very glandulous and delicate organ, and the fire warms it, hardens it, produces ulcers and, since the udder is near the bladder, it stimulates that as well, provoking the anastomosis of the veins that flow into it, so the cow will piss blood."

  Roberto said: "The Knight mentioned this unguentum armarium as if it were some useful cure, but you lead us to believe that it could also be used to do harm."

  "Indeed, and that is why certain secrets should be kept from the plebs, so that they are not put to evil use. Ah, dear sir, the debate over what we English call
the Weapon Salve is full of controversy. The Knight spoke to us of a weapon that, suitably treated, brings relief to the wound. But take the same weapon and place it by a fire, and the wounded man, even if miles away, will scream with pain. And if you immerse the blade still stained with blood into icy water, the victim will be seized with a fit of shivering."

  This conversation told Roberto nothing he did not already know, except that Dr. Byrd knew a great deal about the Powder of Sympathy. And yet the doctor's talk had dwelt largely on the worst effects of the powder, and this could not be mere chance. The connection between all this and the arc of the meridian, however, was another story.

  Finally one morning, taking advantage of a sailor's bad fall from a yardarm, which fractured his skull, while there was great confusion on the deck and the doctor was summoned to treat the unfortunate man, Roberto slipped down into the hold.

  Almost groping, he managed to find the right path. Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps the animal was whimpering more than usual that morning: Roberto, more or less at the point where later on the Daphne he would find the kegs of aqua vitae, was confronted by a horrid sight.

  Well shielded from curious eyes, in an enclosure made to his measure, on a bed of rags, lay a dog.

  He was perhaps of good breed, but his suffering and hunger had reduced him to mere skin and bones. And yet his tormentors showed their intention to keep him alive: they had provided him with abundant food and water, including food surely not canine, subtracted from the passengers' rations.

  He was lying on one side, head limp, tongue lolling. On that exposed side gaped a broad and horrible wound. At once fresh and gangrenous, it revealed a pair of great pinkish lips, and in the center, as along the entire gash, was a purulent secretion resembling whey. Roberto realized that the wound looked as it did because the hand of a chirurgeon, rather than sew the lips together, had deliberately kept them parted and open, attaching them to the outer hide.

  Bastard offspring of the medical art, that wound had not only been inflicted but wickedly treated so it would not form a scar and the dog would continue suffering—who knows for how long. Further, Roberto saw in and around the wound a crystalline residue, as if a doctor (yes, a doctor, so cruelly expert!) every day sprinkled an irritant salt there.

  Helpless, Roberto stroked the wretch, now whimpering softly. He asked himself what he could do to help, but at a heavier touch, the dog's suffering increased. Moreover, Roberto's own pity was giving way to a sense of victory. There was no doubt: this was Dr. Byrd's secret, the mysterious cargo taken aboard in London.

  From what Roberto had seen, from what a man with his knowledge could infer, the dog had been wounded in England, and Byrd was making sure he would remain wounded. Someone in London, every day at the same, agreed hour, did something to the guilty weapon, or to a cloth steeped in the animal's blood, provoking a reaction, perhaps of relief, but perhaps of still greater pain, for Dr. Byrd himself had said that the Weapon Salve could also harm.

  Thus on the Amaryllis they could know at a given moment what time it was in Europe. And knowing the hour of their transitory position, they were able to calculate the meridian!

  The only thing to do was obtain proof. At that period Byrd would always leave at around eleven: so they were nearing the antimeridian. Roberto would await him, hidden near the dog, at about that hour.

  He was fortunate, if fortune can be associated with the unfortunate chance that would lead that ship, and all those aboard it, to the nadir of misfortune. That afternoon the sea was rough, and so Roberto could convincingly complain of nausea and stomach upset, and seek his bed, deserting the supper table. At first dark, when nobody yet thought of setting up the watch, he slipped furtively into the hold, carrying only a flint and a tarred rope to light his way. He reached the dog and saw, above his bed, a platform laden with bales of straw used to replace the infested pallets of the passengers. He picked his way through these bales and made himself a niche, from whence he could not see the dog but could see anyone standing beside him, and could certainly overhear all speech.

  The waiting lasted hours, made longer by the moans of the hapless creature, but finally he heard other sounds and discerned lights.

  A little later, he found himself witnessing an experiment taking place only a few steps from him, in the presence of the doctor and his three assistants.

  "Are you taking notes, Cavendish?"

  "Aye, aye, doctor."

  "We will wait then. He is whining too much this evening."

  "It is the sea."

  "Good dog, good old Hakluyt," the doctor said, calming the animal with some hypocrite petting. "It was a mistake not to establish a set sequence of actions. We should always begin with the lenitive."

  "Not necessarily, doctor. Some evenings he is asleep at the proper hour and has to be wakened with an irritant."

  "Careful ... he seems to be stirring.... Good dog, Hakluyt ... Yes, he's upset!" The dog was emitting unnatural yelps. "They have exposed the weapon to the fire. Are you recording the time, Withrington?"

  "It is almost half eleven."

  "Look at the clocks. About ten minutes should go by."

  The dog continued howling for an interminable time. Then he made a different sound, which after an arf arf grew gradually weaker until it was replaced by silence.

  "Good," Dr. Byrd was saying. "Now what time is it, Withrington?"

  "It should correspond. A quarter before midnight."

  "We cannot cry victory yet. We must wait for the control."

  Another interminable wait, and then the dog, who had apparently dozed off with relief, yowled again, as if someone had stamped on his tail.

  "Time, Withrington?"

  "The hour is past. Only a few grains of sand are left."

  "The clock already says midnight," a third voice announced.

  "That seems enough to me. Now, gentlemen," Dr. Byrd said, "I hope they stop the irritation at once. Poor Hakluyt cannot bear it. Water and salt, Hawlse, and the cloth. Good dog, Hakluyt, now you're better.... Sleep ... listen to your master ... it's over.... Hawlse, the sleeping draught in the water."

  "Aye, aye, doctor."

  "There, drink this, Hakluyt.... Good boy, yes ... drink the nice water...." A timid little whine, then again silence.

  "Excellent, gentlemen," Dr. Byrd was saying. "If this cursed ship did not toss so indecently, we might say we have had a good evening. Tomorrow morning, Hawlse, salt on the wound, as usual. Let us sum up, gentlemen. At the crucial moment, here we were close to midnight, and from London they signaled us that it was noon. We are on the antimeridian of London, and therefore on the one-hundred-ninetieth of the Canaries. If the Islands of Solomon, as tradition has it, are on the antimeridian of the Isla de Hierro, and if we are at the correct latitude, sailing towards the west with a following wind, we should land at San Cristoval, or however we choose to rebaptize that ghastly island. We will have found what the Spaniards have been seeking for decades, and at the same time we will hold in our hand the secret of the Punto Fijo. Beer, Cavendish, we must drink a toast to His Majesty, may God keep him always!"

  "God save the King!" the three said in one voice—and all four were obviously stout-hearted men, still loyal to a monarch who, in those days, had not yet lost his head though he was on the point of losing his throne.

  Roberto put his mind to work. That morning, seeing the dog, he had noticed that the animal, when stroked, grew calmer but, touched more roughly, he yelped with pain. It took very little, on a ship tossed by the sea, to provoke various sensations in a sick body. Perhaps those villains believed they were receiving a message from far away, while on the contrary the dog suffered or experienced relief as the waves alternately jarred or lulled him. Or if, as Saint-Savin used to say, unconscious concepts existed, then Byrd by moving his hands caused the dog to react according to the doctor's own unconfessed wishes. Had he himself not said of Columbus that the man had erred, wishing to prove he had traveled farther? Was the destiny of the world
thus affected by the way these madmen interpreted the language of a dog? Could a grumbling in the poor animal's belly make the villains decide they were approaching or moving away from a place desired by Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese, all equally villainous? And was not he, Roberto, involved in this adventure in order one day to tell Mazarin and young Colbert how to populate the ships of France with tortured dogs?

  The others by now had left. Roberto came out of his hiding place and stopped, in the light of his tarred rope, before the sleeping dog. He touched the creature's head gently. In that poor animal he saw all the suffering of the world, the furious tale told by an idiot. His slow education, from the Casale days to this moment, had brought him to this truth. Oh, if only he had remained a castaway on the desert island, as the Knight had wanted, or if only, as the Knight had also wanted, he had set fire to the Amaryllis, if only he had stopped at the third island, among those natives the color of burnt sienna, or on the fourth, where the Knight became the bard of that people. If only he had found Escondida, to hide there from all the assassins of this merciless world!

  He did not know then that fate had in store for him, soon, a fifth island, perhaps the Last.

  The Amaryllis seemed mad, and Roberto, clinging to everything along the way, returned to his cabin, forgetting the sickness of the world as he suffered instead the sickness of the sea. Then came the shipwreck, of which we have told. He had carried out his mission with success: sole survivor, he bore with him Dr. Byrd's secret. But he could no longer reveal it to anyone. And besides, it was perhaps a secret of no worth.