The Island of Last Truth by Flavia Company, Laura McGloughlin

Nothing is waiting for me, on land. I’ll live embittered by all that’s happened, blaming myself for having led my friends to their deaths, raging about my failure, useless, unable to give classes or operate, maybe living with my father, retired in Georgetown hoping death comes for me before it does for him. As long as I’m here, I feel I’m expiating my guilt. The suffering is useful to me. You, on the other hand, want to live, return to the world, to find once again what you left behind. Do you have family?”
    â€œWhen I left Lisbon my parents were alive, yes, and I have a brother and sister, Miguel and Lidia. Lidia is two years younger than me, a math teacher in the school where we studied together. Miguel is a motorbike mechanic. He’s married and has two children. My parents have a grocery store in the Alfama neighborhood.”
    Prendel thinks that Nelson is surely inventing everything he tells him, but it doesn’t occur to him to reproach him because in the middle of that night of misfortune, he feels in the mood for the most common story in the world, the ABCs of a family and their work and bonds. He wants to hear about these things.
    He himself has told a number of lies and some truths, as if he were chatting from his apartment in Manhattan, and he assumes Souza has done the same. He understands that it is not the stories that matter, but the act of telling them to each other. At these moments, they don’t need someone familiar, in the profound sense of the word, but a companion, someone at their side who talks, says anything, humanizes them. The next day, Prendel is sure that he is well enough to leave. Eleven days have gone by. Souza has made sure that he’s had everything he needed. The island of contradictions, Prendel baptizes it. He’s been searching for a name for it for days. He mentions it to Souza, who says:
    â€œDoes it seem important to you doctor, what this forsaken piece of land is called?” He raises his index finger to his temple and rotates it to signal that Prendel has got a few scews loose.
    â€œPutting a name on things seems a good way of making them exist,” adds Prendel, not too convinced. And he thinks that maybe, without realizing it, they both are going through transitory moments of madness. That asphyxiating heat, that situation, are not for nothing. And in this state, they are capable of anything. At times he thinks that if only they could manage to escape from there, if they could reach civilization together, they could be friends. His hatred is becoming tolerance. What would he have done in Souza’s place? To consider the question is to begin to get outside of himself and become able to see the world, for an instant at least, through other eyes. What would he have done? And he realizes he isn’t capable of giving himself a single answer.
    â€œNow I know you know I have a boat, Prendel. Now I won’t lower my guard. Careful what you do. I guarantee you we will leave here. I told you I had a plan. And I have. But it will be when I say, understood?”
    Prendel nods. He has no choice but to obey orders.
    â€œI can’t trust you, you made that clear. The book was a test, Prendel. I thought: if he doesn’t bring it back to me after a week, he can’t be trusted. Pacts, although they might be made about small things, are made to be fulfilled. You have to keep your word. And also, you invaded my territory. If you’d stayed in your zone until I came to look for you . . . ”
    â€œWould you have come?’
    â€œNo doubt.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œWhenever, a month, three months, a year.”
    Prendel laughs in a stentorian manner.
    â€œA year!”
    â€œTime passes quickly. Life does, Prendel. A year here is nothing. Nothing changes in a year, except how you see someone. In a year, we would have built a solid trust.”
    â€œAnd why do I want your solid trust?”
    â€œTo get off the