The Strange Tale of Alfredo Nemo

Alfredo Nemo sailed as a passenger on the Maria Grazia, which carried some of the first Europeans to South America back in the 1600s. He, as a poet, was, of course, in search of pure adventure, whereas the sailors were in search of a quick gold nugget, since they had heard so many stories about this continent.

So, when the ship ran aground on the coast of Venezuela and the sailors all scattered to look for the fabled rivers of gold, Nemo himself went into the deep forest on his own and took no heed of his companions' calls. As time progressed, he lost his way altogether and the forest became darker and more threatening, a delight and a thrill, a panic and a terror, all for the sake of poetic inspiration. Then—at last—Alfredo came across a settlement of local people, a proud race, which appeared to be ruled by a glorious, almost divine, female warrior called Apocatlopotla.

He was entranced by the sight of this queen, and she, in turn fell in love with the curious looking European and swiftly took him away from the sight of curious onlookers. For a few days they enjoyed the heights of sensuality in a dark and hidden spot outside the settlement, because such things could not be revealed, and the queen was subject to higher powers—but, alas, their love could not be hidden for long.

Some of the high priests (those with sharp hearing who could tell the difference between wild animal cries and shouts of passion) discovered the sacrilege and called on all the villagers to avenge the gods, who, of course, had been deprived of the virgin sacrifice they were expecting. Nemo and the lady of the darkness had to run for their very lives. Both soon became quite lost in the jungle, and he fell ill with a strange fever. While he was unconscious, Apocatlopotla, whose knowledge of nursing and care for the sick was somewhat limited, simply disappeared. History does not relate if she returned to the village to face her fate or whether she decided, after all those enlightening discussions with this man from a different culture, that life was too precious to squander on superstition, but, in any case, she earned her small place in history because, Nemo, when he awoke, wrote this poem to commemorate her.

He wrote the poem on the only paper he had and then sank back into unconciousness. Just before he died, his fellow travellers, who, of course, had found no gold and were totally fed up with jungle life, stumbled across him. He awoke briefly to tell the tale of the mysterious lady of the darkness and begged them to take the scrap of paper, in case it could serve as a warning to others. They had to bury poor Alfredo himself, and, despite their lack of poetic nature, they recognised the potential value of his poem and took it on with them to Mexico as they journeyed in search of the riches they craved.

Alonso del Torillo tried to get some money out of the poem by offering it for sale to the first rich looking person he met in Mexico, but, since Nemo was an unknown poet, he did not get much for his pains. The scrap of paper, which had accompanied such passion and thoughtlessness, simply ended up in the vaults of the municipal musem in Mexico city, never to be uncovered until recently.

The museum custodian reported recently that visitors late in the afternoon had heard sounds of human desperation and even, occasionally, curiously antique music from below the floor of the museum. One even said he heard a high pitched voice declaiming the very poem of which we write. So the authorities decided that the time had come to revisit the archives and remove the poem from its undeserved obscurity.

Thus it was that the poem came to light, and was set to music.

Now, if this were a true ghost story, we could continue by claiming that the composer who set Alfredo's poem was distantly related to the mysterious warrior queen and her lover. We could even say that the ghostly genes of the descendants of Apocatlopotla and Nemo somehow reached the distant shores of England and—in flesh—inspired this first performance of the song.

We could say that—but, to be honest, we could not possibly comment.