These are islands that can only come from a fairy tale. But they are real ones not far from the coast in the southern Caribbean. Hardly anyone outsiders come here. No real reason. The locals say it's because of their eccentric Governor, Antonio Maria Perez Hidalgo. Governor Hidalgo likes to think that the world doesn't know about his small archipelagos, not even the president of the country to which these islands belong. He has his undersecretary take care of the mail and other annoyances, phantoms, really, from the mainland, from the boats.
He's re-elected three times now, challenged each time by some lunatic that either were really his friends or soon disappeared before the the election. And the election was an annoyance, the only real reminder that he had to answer to someone, or something else. Still, he was popular, not cruel, and the people pretty much govern themselves. The islands never faced natural disasters, not even during the annual season of the hurricane. Some outsiders would say it's because it was lucky and that it was situated too much to the Southwest of the Caribbean, making it nearly invulnerable to the hurricanes that rarely world stray south as they moved north from the the Atlantic. But the locals, the islanders, attributed their great weather year-round, and abundant fish to the eccentricity of the governor. In some ways he was like a demi-god, and so there was no need to change governors anyway; a new one might either want to make silly progressive changes or worse, exploit the people as stories had been told was the case in the mainland.
Governor Hidalgo lives in his gubernatorial palace on the cliff that faces the turquoise sea, with a long, white, sandy beach at the bottom of the cliff. He often goes down there all year round to take his walk or take a dip.
His wife had died of some mysterious disease that the local doctor couldn't figure out. And in the wake of her death the governor had spent some reclusive time inside. Those five or six months were the only times the islanders didn't see him at all walking or swimming on his beach or anywhere else on this largest of the islands. He was in the company of his friends of the palace. By friends I don't' mean people. He didn't have people friends. He had his advisers who were just as laidback as he was, not a single one was power-hungry, and that included the under-secretary who oversaw nearly all affairs of the island. There weren't many affairs to look after in the island, and the judges, one on each island, did what they needed to keep the peace. And even that peace was too much for the governor, especially during the months after his beloved wife's death.
From the outside his palace was, though beautiful and extravagant like any typical palace, normal. Nothing eccentric. But if you hear the cry of something non-human, you already have some idea of the eccentricity of the place. Still, you think it's from the lush vegetation that surrounded the palace. Upon closer inspection, you realized that the vegetation was not entirely normal. Most of the plants were the typical Caribbean plants, but then you find oak, elm, even pine trees. Ah! That's because his beloved wife was a North American, whom he met when their boats collided and the accident nearly killed them both. It was a fairytale start to a peaceful marriage. They met in such harrow circumstances and he charmed her to the core. For more details on that incident, you would have to ask the governor himself.
The doors open out as you approach it, and instead of seeing a Latino man with a big grin (if you were welcome), you see a Sikh with the usual turban and handlebar mustache, and even carrying his kirpan, the dagger that forms one of his religious accessories. Suddenly you think you're in India, or at least, British India. The governor spent his entire time as a diplomat in Delhi at a hotel that had a Sikh doorman he had befriended, and it was that doorman that prophesied that he would one day meet his wife in the most accidental manner. And for the same reason you would find the best Indian tea served in the best Indian china set. But you haven't been served yet. Under the marble ceiling, standing on marble tiles, and surrounded by marble columns you are impressed. But you continue through the copper-plated doors that stand in the middle of the wall before you if you choose not to go to any of the lavish rooms on your sides. Behind the door is where legend is mixed with facts, and if you are a phantom, you can pass through those doors because, supposedly, the only people who've walked through them are the governor and his wife.
It has been said that the in the middle of this room is a huge fish tank, about the size of half of a block in Manhattan (halving the avenue side). And it is about one and a half stories tall. The thick glasses have a trapezoid cross-section to withstand the weight of the water. There is a sophisticated pumping and filter system that makes the water feel nearly like in the ocean where the magical fishes live. At least that's what the fishes are supposed to feel. There are small schools of colorful rainbow fish, the dormant but predatory wolfish hiding at the bottom, small sharks, a rather large ray, and many other fishes, too many to list, living alongside the crustaceans and sponges and other invertebrates. How the fish got there depends who you ask. But everyone agrees that no one else could enter that room and that the governor wouldn't be lugging a pail of water of fishes. Equally controversial is what he did with the dead ones, or how he fed the different fishes. The big fish tank is lit from both the top by natural sunlight during the day, and from the bottom, except when no one was there during the night. Surrounding the fish tank were lots of tropical trees, and once inside you feel like you're in a jungle, or at east in one of those large zoos in North America. There are birds, including really loud ones native to the islands, that you might have heard before the Sikh opened the door for you. It is said that the roof was often open, and the birds could come and leave as they pleased, but they always returned before sunset. The governor loved to walk in the different paths inside this room with his wife, speaking her English, the only time you'd hear him speak English. He was already sixty five when she passed away, and it was speculated that he just sat there on that bench, the one place they stopped and rested to admire their surroundings each time.
How does any of this have even an iota of truth? Not long after the governor had done mourning for his wife, he went in his car one day, without his driver. It was the only time he was seen driving. His grounds maintenance people thought it was odd, and his driver would feel very guilty afterwards. Witnesses said that he drove to the private port, told the guards little, and boarded his yacht alone. And that was the last time anyone saw him. What he did leave behind, and not any note, was a book he apparently had written during those five or six months, all typed up in his typewriter. He probably typed it inside that secret world because no one heard the loud clanging of the typewriter. He could have used a computer, but it isn't believed that he had ever turned one on.
It is in this manuscript that we know something about his life inside that world. However, many argue that he didn't write it. After all, no one had heard him and no paper was purchased. It doesn't matter. We can pretend he wrote it. Because it's sweet. They would sit there, on that bench, even in old age, away from all the noise of the outside, or what they felt was noise, and just be with each other in there. In the manuscript he wrote extensively about the fishes, the different kinds, and gave some of them names, names that his wife made up, and he would write about short stories relating to a particular fish as the central character. These stories quickly became legends as the islanders mourned the disappearance and therefore loss of their beloved ruler. But these stories were trumped by the central character of the manuscript: it was the Crying Crocodile. His name was Robert, an English name that probably was another creation of the wife. Robert's life was intricate, but mostly sad. He cried nearly everyday, but his cries were never heard because crocodiles didn't make crying sounds, just hisses.
The story ended rather abruptly, the manuscript. The last few pages were the strangest. It detailed Robert's discovery of a bird named Phoebe that started singing a story. A story of great tragedy. It was a story about a woman that felt trapped most of her life, story about how she had fallen in love with a bird cage that gave her everything in life except freedom.
When they finally blew open the copper-plated doors, what they found inside was an open roof with dying trees. They were dying because someone had stopped the watering system a long time ago and instead salt was added to the soil. There were huge shards of glasses in the middle, probably from the legendary fish tank. There weren't many signs of fish, probably when the water had broken out everything got flushed down this drainage pipe that, they said, funneled to the sea through an underground channel. There were no birds. And no crocodiles. But there was a bench. And it was said that close to the bench there were still remnants of burned paper. They said that servants had kept some because they saw writings on it. But they could get anyone to preserve it and read what was burned, they had disintegrated. The servants couldn't read it themselves, not only because they were hard to read as burned paper, but also because they were in English. Handwritten. Rumors started spreading, but the truth was never told about what was in the pieces of paper and if it was related to the strange ending.
Somewhere out on the Caribbean the old governor looked for a even greater peace, alone this time, for he must have experienced some great upheaval that not even writing a story could help calm his heart.
