but even now, its crown is warm; there, unexpected at that altitude,
there are warmth-loving species of butterflies.
BERNARD VENABLES ~ Baleia! Baleia! Whale Hunters of the Azores
EMILIO BORGES DISEMBARKED AT THE WHARF IN MADALENA AND walked stiffly to the bus, struggling to hide the pain that made him move with such difficulty. He carried a bag filled with a change of clothing and other belongings, from which a butterfly net protruded.
He sniffed the air appreciatively as he walked away from the boat.
Ah, it is good to be back on Pico once again.
Emilio stepped onto the waiting bus. He nodded at the driver and sat down, then took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He ignored the driver and the others on the bus who turned to look, perhaps curious as to why he, an old man, was carrying a butterfly net.
Emilio glanced out the window toward Pico, but the mountain was covered with clouds. He thanked God that his first venture off the island was finally over. It would be his last, no matter what anyone said. He was sure of that. He’d had enough of doctors. And boats. Though he had lived his whole life on an island, he was a man of the land, of the mountain that was Pico, not of the ocean.
The bus quickly filled, then started the half-hour trip to Santo António, winding along the narrow road which circuited the island. He stared out the window, refusing to look at the other passengers, though he had seen one or two neighbors board the bus. He looked out at the green fields and the dense foliage of the checkerboard gardens, closed off by black walls of volcanic rock—walls that hid what lay inside, the way his body had hidden the disease for so long.
I won’t sit helpless and wait for death. Doctors would rather have you crawl into a grave and be finished with it.
The bus dropped Emilio off in nearby Santa Luzia. He continued on foot down the road toward his home in the neighboring village of Santo António. Two of the villagers, Maria Inês and Isabel Fagundes, had scurried off the bus before him. They stood gathering their parcels and bags.
“Poor man,” they said, shaking their heads, watching their silent neighbor make his way, step by painful step, toward his home.
The women waved when he looked at them.
Too weak to wave back, you old busybodies.
“What does he have in that bag, I wonder?” Isabel Fagundes said.
“He looks like a ghost,” Maria Inês said, then moved her lips in a silent prayer, as she crossed herself.
“As if he can’t see or hear us,” Isabel said.
“Poor Maria Alice.”
Emilio managed to smile at the thought of two women who couldn’t possibly understand what he was doing with a butterfly net. He kept looking over toward Pico to see if the summit had broken through its shroud, but observed that it was still hiding its face.
“Only two days separate us,” he said to the mountain. “Then, we will be together, eh? You, me, and the butterflies.”
At last Emilio reached his home. He took out his kerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead, then carefully folded the kerchief again and put it back in his pocket. His every breath came with a struggle. He waited a moment before entering the house.
Maria Alice had her hands full. She had soup on the stove and a dish of bacalhau on the table. Manuel was still out in the fields; he had grown into a fine, strong man. Antónia helped her mother with the meal. Antónia’s child, Dionísio, had recently been born, and Emilio was pleased to be a grandfather. Maria Alice nearly dropped the food when she saw her husband enter the house.
“Emilio! What are you doing here? Back so soon?” She rushed up to him, and peered at his face. “What is wrong? What happened?”
Maria had an uncanny ability to detect the truth, as well as a fine nose for deception. Emilio knew he couldn’t lie to her, and knew that by looking at him she would suspect the worst. Maria didn’t have to state with words that he looked terrible.
“What did the doctors say?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. She had fought fiercely to go with him to Terceira, but he had refused, insisting she stay home—he had wanted to go alone. He put down the bag and went to the cupboard. He took down the bottle of aguardente, poured a glassful and gulped it down. He poured another glassful and sat at the table.
“Well?” Maria Alice said. “What did they tell you?”
“Nothing,” he said finally. He knew he had to tell her now. He took a deep breath. “I am going to climb Pico. I decided on the boat back from Terceira.”
“You are going to do what?”
He sat back as his wife stared at him in disbelief. He might as well have said that he was going to the moon. “I will climb Pico.”
“I can’t believe my ears,” she said, raising her hands with her palms up, the way that had always made him smile. “Why? What about the doctors?”
“I’m through with all that. The cancer is everywhere, and I am an old man. There’s nothing they can do.”
“Maybe you should go to some other doctors,” Maria Alice said, softening her voice to a more conciliatory and persuasive tone. “We could go to San Miguel, see a specialist. They will do something, no?”
“There is nothing the doctors can do now but quicken the work God has already started. No, I will not go to any specialists. I have only one wish and that is to climb the mountain.”
Maria puffed herself up, the way she did when she was angry, and folded her arms over her chest.
“You’ve never climbed Pico in all your life,” she said. “It makes no sense. Why should you do this? Why now?”
“Because I want to.”
“Who will go with to guide you?”
“No one. I must go alone.”
“Dear God, save us! My poor husband has lost his mind. An old man, and he is going to go off on a crazy adventure and get himself killed!”
Emilio smiled, “She’s worried about a dying man getting killed.”
She ignored his comment, then noticed the butterfly net sticking out of Emilio’s bag. “What is this?” she said.
“A net, to catch butterflies with,” Emilio said.
“A what?”
“Listen woman,” he said. “I met a man in Terceira, called himself a naturalist. He told me that at the top of Pico there are butterflies that can be found nowhere else. They live by the warmth of the crater. There and only there.”
“So?”
“So, I want to see this butterfly.”
The next day the whole village discussed the news that the dying man, Emilio, had lost his senses, and was going off to chase wild butterflies.
Emilio’s oldest friend, Luís, who owned the café, tried to talk him out of his plan.
“There’s nothing up there, old man,” Luís said. “It’s cold. Too high. Nothing grows up there, and nothing could live up there.”
“How do you know?” Emilio asked. “Have you climbed up there to see? The naturalist told me that the warmth of the volcano keeps the butterflies alive.”
“I don’t need to go up there to know he was pulling your leg, Emilio. He’s probably laughing right now, a good joke to tell an old man, yes?”
“It was no joke, Luís. The man had pictures. He showed me one he had caught, too. I am going up to see for myself.”
Luís stared at his friend, a stubborn man who wouldn’t listen to reason. “Look, Emilio,” he said. “It’s only a mountain. Leave it be. It was there before us and it will remain long after we are gone.”
Emilio finished the drink Luís had proffered.
“Just a mountain, you say.” Emilio spoke with finality. “We put ourselves into the soil here, our sweat and hard work. Just like our parents and grandparents before us. This is where we will all be buried. The mountain is part of us, just as we are part of the mountain. We are like the black stones of Pico.”
Luís sighed. “So why climb? Pico is difficult. It’s dangerous. People fall, they die.”
“Because this butte
rfly has found a secret place where there are no others. It lives there alone, and perhaps it can only live in that one place. Anyway, I’ve decided I want to see them for myself before I die.”
“This mountain is not for someone to go climb alone,” Luís insisted. He mentioned the various people who had disappeared while attempting to climb Pico over the years, scientists and even experienced climbers who had gotten lost or fallen. “There are too many dangers,” Luís said. Fog or clouds that came up without warning; furnas or craters that one could stumble into and fall hundreds of feet; the treacherous steep slopes.
“I’ve heard all that,” Emilio said, waving away the so-called dangers. “People lose their way because they think they can conquer the mountain, right? But me, I go with a purpose, a search.”
It was impossible. Emilio wouldn’t listen. Not to his friends, not to Father Silva after Sunday Mass. He was going.
“Think of your wife and family,” Father Silva said. “If God had meant for men to climb mountains—and you, an old man already. You are sick. Here is where you belong, with your family, your friends.”
But nothing could shake Emilio’s desire.
On the second night after his return from Terceira, Emilio kissed his sleeping children and grandchild good-bye. He walked out of the house, his traveling bag weighed down with some food, a jug of water, and a heavy rusted chain he had purchased for next to nothing from Claudio, the mechanic. He also carried the butterfly net that the naturalist had kindly given him, after Emilio had told the man that he too would climb Pico and find the butterflies that could live nowhere else.
“Can’t you at least go when it’s light?” Maria Alice pleaded. “Soon there will be rain, or perhaps snow. You could freeze up there.”
“No. It is at night that the mountain bares its face. The clouds come with the sunrise.” He kissed Maria Alice good-bye and held her briefly. “I will come back tomorrow.” He started walking down the road.
“Butterflies!” he heard her say as he walked off. “What will I tell the children?”
“Tell them to look up at the mountaintop,” he shouted. “If the weather is clear perhaps they will see me dancing with the butterflies.”
The moon was full and Pico stood out, a dark tower jutting into the night, more felt than seen. Emilio was accompanied up the mountain by the sound his shoes made as they ground against the volcanic rock. On the side of the road he found a long, sturdy branch to use as a walking stick.
He climbed steadily, pausing now and again to rest or drink a bit of water. Up ahead the dark mountain loomed, always there, larger than life.
I’m coming, my friend. You don’t seem so dangerous, so terrible. Just a mountain, eh?
It was true that over the years people had lost their way and disappeared, never to be seen again. But he had lived and worked his whole life here. Surely the mountain knew him as well as he knew the mountain.
He quickly left behind the houses and people, the cows, the patches of woods. Then it was only Emilio and the naked mountain. He listened to the wind rush down the slope—making a low, mournful howl as the air sang through the ravines and over the furnas, like blowing air across a bottle top.
“Ah, Pico is breaking wind,” Maria Alice would have said. Emilio chuckled.
The path was steep and wound its way in a series of sharp switchbacks. He heard the sound of his breathing and occasionally rocks falling. The air was dry and smelled of the volcano, which slept, though no one knew when it might awaken. Now and then there had been rumbles, earthquakes.
He pushed himself to go farther, to ignore the thinning air and the steep passes, fearing that if he stopped, he might not be able to continue.
Emilio set himself landmarks to use as goalposts.
I will walk to that jutting rock up ahead before I stop. Then, after, to that crest, or that bend in the trail.
After a couple of hours he stopped and sat down to rest. He picked out the sharp stones that had lodged in the soles of his thin shoes and wiped the abrasions on his hands with a handkerchief.
You may have sharp teeth, mountain, but don’t think that will stop me. I will not be turned back so easily.
Already he was tired, the climb more difficult than he had foreseen, and his body weaker, always weaker.
The lights from Faial, across the channel, blinked at him in the distance; he saw their ghosts on the dark surface of the water. He also could make out scattered lights on the island of São Jorge. Up at the top, the naturalist had said, you could see the others too: Terceira, Graciosa, almost all of the Azores with one glance. Up where the butterflies lived, hovering around the warm mountaintop; where steam escaped through cracks, steam from the very heart of the mountain.
Emilio took out some bread and a slice of meat, then ate, looking down at the world below.
It is so wide. Up here you can see there is so much nothingness out there.
The wind blew, low and mournful.
Such a sad voice you have, mountain.
After half an hour he continued walking. The paths were steep and treacherous, along cliffs and over rocks where there was poor footing and barely anything to hold on to.
Go on, make it difficult. You won’t stop me. What are you hiding up there, eh?
He whistled a tune and wished he had better eyesight.
Ah, it’s cold. Though thank God for the full moon. That and the fact that the skies are as clear as they have been in ages. There are not even birds up here.
His legs began to ache. The satchel felt heavier with each step, slowing him down.
This is nothing, too. Old bones, a tired body, but I have the strength to finish this. That is important. To have the will to make this climb.
Emilio kept moving. He told himself it was just around the next turn; one more ridge, and he would soon be there. Where many people half his age couldn’t make it—where the scientist from the continent had found the butterfly that lived in its secret place.
He pushed himself onward, pressing down on his knees, forcing them to take another step. His breath came quickly and cut through his throat, his lungs.
Not too far. Keep going old man. You can’t stop, now!
The mountain stood by, silent, imposing. On occasion, Emilio’s feet would slip on the rocks, and he would hug the mountain closer. What it must be to be as old as you are, eh, mountain? You do not die, like an old man. How many have you killed, I wonder?
The sky began to lighten. Dawn was breaking. Looking down, he saw the enormous shadow the mountain cast upon the surface of the ocean. Still, the volcano rose before him, its peak beyond reach, as if for each step he took the summit moved farther away.
How can butterflies live in such a place? There are no trees or plants. Could the man have lied, like Luís said? Why would he tell me if it wasn’t true? Did he think I would never climb to find out, that it was safe to tell an old fool like me there was something here when there wasn’t? Maybe I was crazy to do this.
He paused and glanced at the ocean as the sun rose. Perhaps, he thought, the clouds will come. A storm could come without warning to the mountain. He pushed on, determined to reach the top, though the pain made his movements difficult.
Emilio strained, using his arms and hands against the rocks, to get past them, to pull himself up and over. He looked down but could no longer see much below, only the sea, which appeared so calm, so smooth. He smiled happily; he was with God now.
Maybe the mountain is God’s big toe.
The trail wound its way around the edge of the mountain, then cut back into sheltered ground, so unlike the rest of Pico, which was barefaced. Emilio headed for that spot, frantic to reach his goal.
Ah, it is like a nest there in the mountain, a good spot for me to find shelter.
Inside the cut, the wind was quieter and the air was warmer. He could see the peak jutting up ahead of him. The top was very near.
He waved his arms at the cone of the volcano. “Hey, look! I made it, mount
ain. What do you think now?”
He put the heavy satchel down and suddenly felt weightless; even his clothes, which flapped in the breeze, seemed heavier than he did now. He was glad he had brought the chain. The winds on the mountain could be fierce. The chain would weigh him down—keep his body from being blown away, like a dried leaf.
He explored the large protected area. There were no trees, but he did find some brush and small plants, and even small pools of water.
There was a sudden shift of light, and he was momentarily blinded. The sun had moved from behind Pico, filling the area with sunlight. He rubbed his eyes. Everything was a soft blur.
A column of smoke rose from the crater beyond him. On occasion the islanders had witnessed a thin plume of smoke rising from Pico’s summit. Emilio even remembered a time when the smoke had formed a distinct cross. People had photographed the sight, which became a famous postcard. Now he watched the smoke rise, then spiral down toward him, as if blown by a sudden gust of wind—although he felt no wind.
Gray flakes swirled and fell around him. He reached out his hand. Snow? Dry snow falling in sunlight?
The flakes danced around his head. Emilio smiled. No, not snow—butterflies. A cloud of a thousand gray butterflies. The man hadn’t been lying after all. He reached into the satchel and brought out the net that the naturalist had given him. The butterflies flapped their silent wings. The sun shone all around now, and he could see that some of the butterflies were violet, some yellow, while others were streaked in red, green, and blue.
Emilio peered down the mountain, toward the distant villages where his family and friends went about their lives. But everything had gone gray, nothing was clear. Still, he wondered: Did they stop and look up, gazing at the mountain, wondering about old Emilio?
“Hey, you down there. I don’t need to die with you. Up here, I have wings!” He laughed and jumped up and down. Gone was the pain.
A shadow moved across the sky, and he saw that the clouds had indeed come. The butterflies flew around him, encouraging him to join them in their flight. He grabbed hold of the chain. He wrapped one end around his right leg.
The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales Page 8
