“But who will fish and tend the cows?” João Almerindo asked.
“Or make the wine?” Manuel Vieira wanted to know.
“We should talk to Padre Silveira,” Maria Isabel said.
They went to see the padre and explained the situation, of which he already knew many of the particulars. They begged him to do something.
“I’m not sure what I can do,” he said, cautiously.
“Can’t you declare him dead?” Maria Teresa said. “He should lie down and be quiet like all good dead people.”
“But I need a body, some proof that he is deceased.” The padre was clearly afraid of embroiling himself in something that he saw as beyond the scope of his experience, uncertain as to whether this had to do with God and heaven or was some sinister ploy of angry witches or some other minion of the devil. “What’s more,” he said. “I need to know the moment of death, or at least how long he has been dead.”
This thoroughly confused everybody because no one could agree on when Alfredo had passed away. Since he had continued to live after losing his shadow and resisted death by drowning, falling, being run over several times, and numerous other instances, the padre declared that for all practical purposes, he was still a living man, as far as he could ascertain, and as such, he was in no position to be pronounced dead.
Alfredo was seen again and again, looking older but no less alive. He shouted unintelligible words at the clouds, sun, and moon; even the waves behaved strangely in his presence. The villagers often heard him speaking to the goats and cows, and sometimes, those aboard the fishing boats observed him swimming with the whales and dolphins. Except for the children, he hardly spoke at all to any of the remaining townspeople and, in fact, rarely seemed to notice them. No one understood anything he said anymore.
“He is louco, at last,” people said to one another, nodding.
Still the children, who remained children no matter what the old and dying said or did, produced the offerings of miracles they had long ago prophesied.
Little Emanuel paraded a hermaphrodite goat; Maria Luisa da Costa e Silva carried about her two-headed chicken; three of the children were deaf and dumb and so given the stature of minor divinities; Eriana “Ninha” Pacheco carried her baby within her virgin womb for eighteen months before delivering the child at night under the waves, tearfully watching it swim off for the open sea, its fin slipping effortlessly through the water, moonlight glistening off its scales.
Alfredo spent more and more of his time at the top of the mountain.
The padre continued his Sunday Mass and didn’t appear to notice that the only people who attended his services were ghosts.
Seasons changed and brought bright fruits and vegetables of enormous size in winter and in the fall, and flowers that bloomed every other month. Maracujá and oranges grew the size of melons, nêsperas the size of pears, and fresh water suddenly began flowing from a spring in the ground. The children waded into the ocean and caught fish which leaped into their hands.
Delightfully warm rains fell and, on occasion, the sun stayed in the sky for several days. The children gathered one night and watched as the moon settled on the mountain, brought there, of course, by Alfredo, who was still up to his old tricks.
The children played, and made up poems and songs about their village and about the legend of the great timeless death of Alfredo. They continued to gather the special animals born with three legs or two heads, and lived without any regard for the outside world, perhaps without even knowing that they were not following the ways of their parents and grandparents.
Finally, Alfredo’s friend, José Vicente, now extremely old and one of the few remaining villagers alive, decided to take matters into his own hands.
“As long as Alfredo is alive,” José said. “Nothing will ever change around here.”
So José Vicente went off in search of Alfredo, prepared to bring Alfredo the death that had eluded him for so long and return his village at last to normal.
“I hope he finds him,” Maria Teresa said. “This should have been done a long time ago.”
José Vicente swore he wouldn’t come back without first delivering Alfredo to the very gates of heaven. He marched up the side of the mountain, disappointed that the children he spoke to refused to tell him whether Alfredo had swum off, or flown, or gone up to the mountaintop and climbed onto the back of the moon making its way across the sky.
~ ~ ~
Many, many years later, a bent and frail old man stumbled into the village. His eyes were opaque with cataracts, his skin grew like the bark of the trees, his hair was a tangled nest of silver and gray, and his limbs resembled the spindly branches of the fava trees more than human arms and legs.
A group of people was hard at work in the village—strangers who had come on a large boat. They were cutting down huge plants and vines, many of which crisscrossed the roads and completely covered the houses. A small group of nuns and priests was busy officiating over the recitation of prayers and splashing holy water everywhere.
The old man walked until he found a yard being used to slaughter the huddled groups of deformed animals. Blood pooled in the mud and an overpowering stench filled the air.
A group of children was being led toward a boat that had come to take them away. The old man stared at the children as they passed. Some of them looked up at him, as well. His own child, Joana Maria, didn’t recognize him, nor did José Vicente recognize her.
He passed the people working and opened his mouth to speak, but no one could make out a word he said. They heard gibberish, and assumed he was senile.
“Hey, you,” someone shouted. “Old man!” He was gently grabbed by the arm and pulled to face one of the workers. “Are you coming with us or are you staying behind?”
The old man’s lips moved without a sound.
“Who are you?”
The old man shook his head.
“Everyone in this village is dead except for some poor children, who are, you know,” he said, touching the side of his head. He peered at the old man’s face and spoke slowly in a loud voice. “Even the old padre was just a skeleton, kneeling in prayer in the church. It looks as if we are the first people to arrive in, hell, who knows how many years. Are you from here?”
José Vicente made a hoarse wheezing sound.
“Hey, João, hurry up,” one of the other workers shouted. “There’s still work to do.”
“Patience. I’m coming. Good-bye, old man.” He returned to the group of workers.
José Vicente turned around and shuffled down the dirt road back toward the mountains, mumbling and muttering to himself. His eyes shone, alive with the light of one who has searched the back of the moon and beyond, the look of one who has wandered a landscape where time performed strange permutations and sleights of hand, as he set out once more to follow the slippery trail of Alfredo Bettencourt’s timeless and elusive death.
THE TRUTH, OR RATHER THE ENTIRE TRUTH, IT IS SAFE TO SAY, WILL never be known—at least not with any certainty. Some say that the day Maria Leonor Almeida washed up on the sands of Quebrado do Caminho was the day the devil rose from his foul depths to plague the village. Others insist it was no less than a miracle, that God and a host of saints were involved.
“The girl is blessed,” they murmured. “Someone to be admired and feared.”
Old Palmira, the benzedeira, was summoned in order to remove the evil spell some believed had been placed on the girl. Even still, Maria Leonor’s grandmother shut herself in her room and refused to eat, drink, or sleep, praying continuously, “until this shame is finally removed from our house and family.”
Maria Leonor claimed to have no idea what had taken place, but anyone could see her eyes gleamed, transfixed; as if she gazed at something in the distance. Soon she was unable to speak, but uttered only strange incomprehensible noises.
The events of those mysterious few weeks are shrouded by conflicting reports and irresponsible conjecture, which—along wit
h the conflagration of hysteria—swept over the entire village. Needless to say, nothing of this nature had ever occurred on the island of Pico or on any of the Azores, for that matter.
Maria Leonor’s father, Senhor João Gilberto Almeida, the proud and wealthy owner of some of the island’s finest pastures and cows, turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the events, burying himself in his work as well as his hobbies, shooting his collection of antique firearms and working as an amateur genealogist, researching the ancient origins of his family tree, which traced its obscure beginnings to the eighth century. He simply refused to believe or even acknowledge that anything unusual was taking place. Throughout all the following events he maintained an impassive silence; there was an air of imperial fortitude in this last of the monarchists, a man who had seen so many changes transpire during his lifetime.
No one could agree on how Maria Leonor had ended up on the beach. Senhor Fraga said the girl had floated, clinging to a large piece of wood, and been carried by the waves to the shore; Dona Maria da Cunha believed Maria Leonor had flown, although she was at a loss to say how; Senhor Velas claimed he saw her walk out of the waves on her own two feet. Maria’s mother would only say that an angel must have refused to allow Maria Leonor to die and had come down at that moment to save her daughter’s life, protecting her from the shame of drowning.
“Only the most wretched people drown,” Senhora Almeida said. “Poor people who haven’t a thing, not even a name. No one with the name Almeida has ever died an improper death; we die only at a time and in a manner that God sees fit.”
What is certain is that, one week earlier, Maria Leonor had left her home in the late afternoon and walked down to the sea. Voices, she later said, called to her again and again. Sweet voices, melodic and musical—“angelic voices,” Maria Leonor insisted—called her name, whispering their muffled messages, which she had followed as she attempted to decipher their meaning.
She remembered approaching the waves without fear, curious, yet completely at peace. As to the question, Did she try and drown herself? No one could say with any certainty. She herself did not remember, except that one moment she had been standing, listening as she watched the progression of the waves, on the verge of understanding what the sounds filling her ears meant, when suddenly she was swept away, held aloft by the rising water, and carried out to sea.
Senhora Almeida loudly insisted that no one with the name Almeida would ever attempt suicide. “We do not sin,” she said, with conviction and defiance.
Miguel Carneiro, a fisherman from Madeira, who’d come to Quebrado do Caminho after a failed and infamous romance with a married woman, had been sailing back to the harbor with a sizable catch after several days at sea. The weather was fair and the sea was calm.
He kept his eyes trained on the stretch of water that lay between him and the island, steering for the spot of land where he would soon moor his boat and come ashore. He would head for the tavern and drink his fill, hoping to forget the doleful dark eyes of Dona Rosa de Melo.
While still several kilometers away from the village, Miguel spotted a group of dolphins. He smiled, for they were the only companions he had while at sea. The dolphins swam alongside his boat and leaped playfully in the water. He heard their laughter as they appeared to glance over at him, the twinkle in their eyes seeming to say, “Hello there. Come, let’s have some fun!”
Miguel waved and laughed. Then he saw that one in their midst wasn’t a dolphin at all, but a woman, rising then diving into the waves, her hair made sleek by the water. Did he know her? Was he really seeing what he thought? He shook his head, shutting then reopening his eyes.
Just as suddenly as they had appeared, the dolphins, with the woman he perhaps recognized among them, swam away. He tried to steer the boat toward the dolphins, but at once the sea turned choppy; the waves slapped the boat back with sudden force, as if to prevent him from following.
Stunned and muttering to himself, in a state of complete confusion, Miguel reached the dock. He tied the boat and stumbled to the Taberna Mendes, where he remained until closing, attempting to wash down the persistent image of an enticing young woman with flawless skin, swimming through the water with a swarm of dolphins.
Maria Leonor, when she was later found, was thoroughly examined by the schoolteacher, Eduína Fagundes, because there was no doctor in the village. Even if there had been one, people would have looked upon him with suspicion, trusting in medical doctors only as a last resort, and then often only to assure a speedier route to one’s grave.
“If the prognosis is in doubt,” Maria Leonor’s grandmother declared, “call in a doctor. He’ll walk in with death at his side.”
Maria Leonor was taken home, and no one saw or heard from her for many days.
“She is giving thanks,” her mother said. “Since she was dragged out of the sea more dead than alive, only by the miracle and intervention of Our Lady, who, as the Mother of God, naturally felt pity and compassion and decided to spare our poor child, Maria Leonor has since felt the terrible burden of eternal gratitude and has resolved to pray, with her sainted grandmother, until her own heart has found her debt satisfactorily repaid.”
Senhora Almeida found it impossible to speak without making a speech, perhaps to compensate for her husband’s reticence. But the truth was that Maria Leonor hadn’t fully recovered from her experience and was quite ill. This was learned from Carlota Santos, the maid of a neighbor, who was said to have heard it from one of Senhora Almeida’s own servants.
“It’s just as though the land has made her seasick,” Carlota explained.
Maria Leonor was in a terrible state and remained shut away in her room. She was constantly attended and watched over by her mother, by her aunts and her sisters—a vigil of candles and prayers, of tears and lamentations, of threats and pleadings. Only one of the maids, Maria Estreita, who had been with the family the longest, was allowed near her. The long hours of exposure to the sea, the lack of food and fresh water, and the unexpected shock resulting from her experience had created lasting ill effects.
Neighbors attempted to visit the house, eager to learn more and see for themselves what condition the girl was in. They dressed in their best and came armed with an insatiable curiosity, but the maids were instructed not to permit any visitors into the house, which sent more than one neighbor off in a huff, gravely insulted, driven to anxiety by their desire to know all the details of what was occurring without their knowledge.
The Almeidas’ maids and servants were each questioned daily on the streets or in the markets, often bribed with offerings of sweets.
“Did you hear?” whispered Dona Maria da Cunha, as she stood outside the jeweler’s shop. “Maria Leonor is being kept alive with buckets of seawater.”
“What?”
“I heard it just this morning. They’re bringing seawater into the house and pouring it over her.”
The other women murmured to themselves.
“She sits in a tub of salt water all day and night.”
Senhor Fraga, after the church service, told what he had heard. “They say that she tried to jump from the upstairs window and they had to tie her up.”
“But why?” someone asked.
“Because she wishes to return to the sea. They say it draws her, as if during her days in the ocean her blood had been replaced with seawater.”
“Perhaps King Neptune himself has won her heart,” another added.
“Ahh.”
Alvaro de Palma, the old whale lookout, came forward. “I saw Maria Leonor standing on the back of an enormous whale,” he said, “the likes of which I have never seen before, the greatest of all whales. I was so surprised by what I saw that I even forgot to sound the alarm announcing a whale had been spotted.” But the whalers who listened to Alvaro de Palma eyed him with some doubt, thinking he was drunk again.
Of course, no one could confirm or deny the authenticity of these stories, which at times exceeded the natural limits of pla
usibility. However, they continued in this manner until the startling revelation, which instantly transformed even the most persistent doubters: Maria Leonor Almeida was pregnant.
The news traveled to every corner of Quebrado do Caminho like a bolt of lightning. Horror and disbelief were expressed in the streets and carried from open window to open window. How did this happen? Who was the father? Was she raped? Had she knowingly seduced one of the young men of the village?
While most of the men were more than a little surprised, many of the women were upset; for, except for the one or two braggarts who claimed to have always noticed something peculiar about the girl, the rest were at a complete loss to explain Maria Leonor Almeida’s condition. After all, no one had ever really taken any notice of her. They had always thought of her as an absolutely unexceptional girl, not worthy of anyone’s attention. If someone had bothered to point her out they would have all probably shaken their heads and exclaimed: “Her? Why, I had forgotten all about her!” Now, however, all that had changed. Now no one could forget her or talk of anything else.
“She was always a quiet girl,” one neighbor said. “A good girl.”
“Yes, but she always did have a far-off look in her eyes,” said another.
“That’s right, a dreamy nature.”
“And always singing, too, songs no one else seemed to know,” said another. “A simple child.”
Suspicion fell almost immediately upon Miguel Carneiro, the fisherman. After all, people were quick to point out, he had been gone about the same amount of time as Maria Leonor. He had returned to the village and drank himself useless, talking crazy talk about dolphins and a girl who swam among them. Even now, after all this time, he still hadn’t gone back out to sea. Not to mention the fact that he had a reputation for scandal, which he wore like a large and heavy chain, and of which he could never rid himself.
Miguel, however, brushed aside their suspicions. “It might have been her that passed my boat in the water with the dolphins. I don’t know. But I never laid a hand on her.”
The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales Page 4
