Islander (Insulaire)

Look...

Straight ahead.

There it is.

My little kingdom.

An island. Merely an island.

Tiny, compared with the immensity around it.

But huge in the eyes of a man

who had never seen the like,

except maybe in his dreams.

This young man, who returned a uniped from the battlefields,

was looking for adventure to counteract

the opulent tranquility of his parents.

This is my new odyssey.

My great project.

Look how the island rises towards the sky,

how it emerges from the waves,

as if placed in the exact middle of nowhere,

fragile yet valiant.

Wild, too,

rougher than a mountain at home.

Harsher, fiercer, and bleaker.

But apter to receive goats than cattle,

apter to content sea lions than herds.

But also greater.

Peopled by ghosts,

abounding in myths and legends.

A pirate by the name of Alexander Selkirk lived here for years

before a ship retrieved him. Once his story was known,

the pen of a storyteller would turn it into the story of Robinson Crusoe.

I, too, was going to measure myself

against the world and howl or be silent in the face of its immensity.

I was going to be reborn

after years of boredom, gloom, and family squabbles,

and time spent - or should I say: lost, wasted -

engaged in this futile passion

that became like second nature to Swiss men:

mercenarism.

This cursed pastime had cost me a leg.

It kept me alive during some rough patches

I struggled to get out of.

It is thus that the island seized me,

in the spring of the year 1877.

I dragged my mangled leg to Argentina,

escaping the inane babbling of my parents

and the languid calm of Berne,

from which only the intoxication of war wrested me.

Of conquests I may still have dreamed.

Above all, I strove to do something

with my life, I think.

This patch of Chilean land had so far been left to pirates.

It was for sale now.

As if the future was reaching out to me.

So, against the promise

to pay USD 1,500 a year,

I became a sub-prefect, judge, minister of customs and postal services

of an entire archipelago.

Landing there with a band of valiant men, I sensed

I would spend my life there.

From then on, the ocean would replace the Alps

outside the windows of Baron von Rodt.

Why was I born on this island?

That's the kind of thing you wonder about as a kid.

Why do I live in a place that's so different from the rest of the world?

A small dot

that doesn't even appear on the maps of the world.

And the rest of the world is huge for us.

Alfred von Rodt,

my great-grandfather, arrived in Chile in very difficult times.

You needed guts to live on this island.

It was completely isolated from the continent.

You needed to be kind of crazy to come and do what he did.

Live on an island where there was barely anything, and create something.

He was a dreamer. Like us... but in the 19th century.

He called himself "the last Robinson". He came here without a thing.

He built a very special community with other people,

families, world citizens...

He created a community.

We're fascinated...

Fascinated by the difficulties he encountered on this island,

which one imagines from a western point of view.

A paradise island, with palm trees

and dolphins...

It was different for settlers in our grandparents' time.

It was a hostile place - still is -

not at all adapted for humans,

with a very harsh climate.

They had to adapt to the island.

And that's the message they transmitted to us.

It's up to us to adapt to the island and its environment.

One of the things he transmitted:

he tried his hand at everything.

He tried to make his dreams come true, to create a home,

a family.

And he died here.

He could have returned to Switzerland,

like other settlers who had come with him.

But he stayed on.

We are what we are thanks to them.

Thanks to their efforts and determination...

Their conviction that this island goes beyond material things,

that it's a way of life.

They decided that the way of life here

would be different from that on the continent.

Living in such a place, with its advantages and disadvantages

and creating a completely different society...

that's what they left to us.

- How is it going, love? - I've made great progress.

- Shall we deal with the plant? - Ok!

You'll have to carry it...

- Which one is it? - That one.

- Where are the tools? - I'll get them.

You'll have to talk with Jon about your plane ticket again.

I've a ticket for the 25th.

My mother will be expecting me in Santiago.

- We'll go to Rancagua from there. - Immediately?

Yes, at the end of the day. Santiago is toxic.

Then all I'll need to do is wait and buy everything for the baby.

The sweet waiting period.

- Your mom is already crazy about it? - Oh, totally!

What about me?

You'll come later. After her birth.

- Here's Margarita! - The plant's called Margarita?

- You'll need to look after it. - We need a stake.

This one...

Or is that too much?

All the things we do here,

looking after the garden, building a house...

we learned all that from them.

We learned it from the first generations who arrived here

and who built a future at great personal sacrifice.

We're here thanks to them.

We need to continue to go forward.

For as long as the island meets our needs, we need to continue.

The future generations will have their own destiny.

- They'll send you to the continent! - You too!

Yes, but they'll put me in a reception home.

Let me whisper something in your ear.

Your soccer team sucks!

This is a commercial lobster.

A female one.

She has a small pocket for her eggs.

She uses her leg to take them out when they're ready.

Let's hope there are many more like this one!

A kiss...

How many are you today?

A hundred?

A thousand?

More?

I do not just mean my progeny.

I mean all of you on the island.

The descendants of my subjects and people who came later.

Drawn by the remoteness

and the permanent feeling

that the limits of this land

persistently oppose the infinity of the sea and sky.

We were but a handful when we arrived. A tiny crew.

With an island all to ourselves.

Not to be conquered, but to be inhabited.

There was a Schiller, there was a Green.

There was a Charpentier, there was a Newton.

There was a Chamorro, There was a Recabaren.

There was a Kirchhof, too.

And even a Dévigne, a compatriot from Vaud,

picked like the other youngsters

whom the name of Valparaiso had lured from home.

We spoke English. We spoke French.

We spoke German. And Spanish if we could.

We spoke every language.

And I liked that.

Whose calf is that?

Must be from a big cow. That one, with the pointed horns.

The spotted one?

Yes, that's her calf. It's still tiny.

But we can brand it. What symbol has it got?

Oh no, the symbol isn't... We'll have to brand it.

We can't leave it like that. Otherwise we'll confuse it with ours.

We have to clear the throat area.

Who's branding it?

Why are you removing its ear?

We're not removing its ear!

We're going to brand it, with a round symbol.

- Doesn't that hurt? - No.

Of course it does!

We all had our speciality.

Schiller was good at nets.

Kirchhof wanted to be the milkman.

Newton was the cook.

Another one was good at building houses.

Another one was a fine marksman.

Dévigne looked after the garden and the hens.

He would have made excellent cheese.

Quiet people, not bellicose at all.

Happy to be in the middle of the ocean.

Good subjects for my little kingdom.

As no one was from here,

no one could say: "You're not from here".

From now on, everyone could say

they were from here,

not elsewhere.

Are you feeling better?