Isola

by Allegra Goodman

If you want to be considered wise, behave wisely and chastely. Be humble to all. Be truthful, courteous, and amiable…

Why was he kind one moment, cruel the next? Like a cat, he loved to play with me. His pleasure was to give and take away again, to reassure and then unsettle me. He praised me when I performed well, but he enjoyed my failings even more. When I was

ruffled and unsure, he taunted me. When I was hurt, he pounced.

He is a speculator, I remembered. He is an adventurer. He had sold my lands to fund his expedition, trading my future for his own. He had done this to me, but I could not object. My guardian served as my protector, but I had no one to protect me from him.

upon the deck. “Now help my servant,” I called down.

The secretary obeyed but did not love his master—and when he said this, he allied himself with me.

Each day presented a new riddle. What is a house without a door? What is a prison without walls? We ate fresh meat but slept outside, as beggars did at home. We had property and yet we were impoverished. On this island, we were rulers and our own subjects too.

Waves rising and then crashing into glass. The tide, both dead and living. Wretched as I was, I saw and heard all this. The rush of water, and the thunder of ice breaking.

That I was blessed to witness such a thing. I did not deserve to see such beauty, and yet this wonder spread itself before me. And I felt God’s presence as I had never done in grief and anger; I knew it in my insignificance. I had given up, and yet God came to me in winter and in ice, in the hard world and in the night.

This was my prayer. Not for rescue or escape, but for my soul, which had been sick. I gazed at waves rising and shattering, and this was my resolve—to remember myself as God remembered me.