“About two hundred years ago, the last attempt to colonize Ons happened,” Docampo went on. “That was when the ancestors of both the Docampos and the Freires first arrived, as well as the forebears of everyone else currently resident here.”
“Where’s this heading?”
“Patience.” He took another puff on his cigar. “Those settlers spent decades trying to make a life for themselves here. They cleared land, plowed fields, battled with the poor soil and all the storms—just like this one now—with pretty meager harvests their only reward.”
Roberto remembered the weed-choked ruins he’d glimpsed on his walks over the previous few days.
“Nothing they did was enough, and the little they got from the land had to be supplemented by what they could get from the sea.” He waved his hand vaguely. “They had to have detailed knowledge of the currents and the winds, and, even so, lives were often lost. But they managed to survive, although it was hardly what you could call the good life.”
“Somedidn’t do so badly.” Roberto gestured to the room around them.
“That’s true, but you’re jumping ahead.” Ramón Docampo gave a half smile.
Roberto took a deep breath. The powder keg was going to blow at any moment, and the old man wanted to sit around telling stories.
“As I was saying, life on the island was hard, and the settlers had no choice but to work together.” He interlaced the fingers of his two hands to illustrate the idea. “Unity is strength, and all that.”
“Were the Freires and the Docampos at each other’s throats back then?”
“Not at all. In the beginning, the ties were very close. I’m sure if we went through the old parish book, we’d find dozens of marriages between our two families over the years, just as between many other families.” A sly smile appeared on his face. “Our blood’s so mixed that it’s only the surnames that differentiate us.”
“So . . . what happened?”
Ramón Docampo shrugged. “Who knows? When you’re barely managing to subsist, sometimes little things can lead to big disagreements. A farm boundary, a boat that needs repairing, a stray cow ... only small things. But they build up and one day explode.”
“In other words, you don’t actually know how the conflict started.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Ramón Docampo said. “Relations weren’t fantastic, but then something happened that really kicked things up a notch.”
“Okay, when was that?”
Ramón Docampo’s cigar had gone out, and he paused to light it again. He puffed on it a few times, enveloping himself in a bluish smoke, until, satisfied, he resumed his story.
“May 15, 1945. Does that date mean anything to you?”
It rang a bell for Roberto, but much as he tried, he couldn’t see a link and just shook his head.
“World War Two had ended one week before,” Ramón Docampo explained. “The Russians were strolling around the ruins of the Reichstag, the Germans had surrendered unconditionally, and the Allied victory was being celebrated right across Europe.”
“That was all a long time ago, and a long way from here. I don’t see the connection.”
“At that time, my father, Severino Docampo, was just one more man trying to eke a living from the island, like everyone else, including Orlando Freire, Rosalía’s father.” Ramón Docampo’s mouth twisted contemptuously. “Orlando! As you can see, the Freires have a liking for pompous names. Well, that morning, my father and Orlando were fishing in the strait between the main island and Onza, the islet out there.”
Roberto nodded, recalling the inaccessible-looking crag he’d seen to the south of the main island.
“According to my father, at about eleven o’clock in the morning, when they had just pulled in the nets, they saw bubbles coming to the surface between the two boats, which were a couple of hundred feet apart. At first, they thought it might be a whale surfacing, but then they found out.”
“What was it?” Ramón’s telling had turned more evocative, and the tale had Roberto in its grip now.
“A metal tower emerged from the water, followed by a long, dark metal tube. Imagine the shock of those two poor islanders when suddenly, right in front of them, a German U-boat appeared.”
Roberto could not help but let out an exclamation. He suddenly pictured the iconic image of a German U-boat, one of those lone wolves responsible for sinking so many ships during the war. “Are you sure? What was a German submarine doing here?”
“During the war, or much of it at least, the port of Vigo was one of their reprovisioning bases,” Ramón Docampo explained. “Throughout the war, they’d seen them pass by the island, often in the middle of the night, on their way to refuel and restock. But by the end of the war, that safe harbor no longer existed.”
“So what happened?”
“According to my father, the sub was in bad shape. The tower was full of holes, and there was a big dent on one side, like it had been kicked by a giant. When they rowed over, they saw that it was leaking oil.”
