The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales

by Darrell Kastin

  He sniffed the box of soil again, then carried it outside, eager to pour it into a section of the yard, perhaps to cultivate a tiny square patch of life in this impoverished place, where the whole land seemed to cry out for all it lacked.

  He found a suitable spot in the corner of the yard, where he had foolishly attempted to grow a few herbs—and in vain, as nothing but weeds had come up. He scraped away three or four inches of California topsoil, then spread the dirt from the box evenly over the ground. He tipped the package upside down, shaking out every last grain, then took the wrappings from the box to the trash can, burying them under the garbage so that his wife, Maria Isabel, wouldn’t find them. The postage had cost him a fortune. He had paid his old friend, Rui Fagundes, to send the package and asked him to keep it secret. If his wife discovered the facts, there would certainly be a dreadful scene.

  He sat back in a lawn chair and looked at the dark patch of soil. Already he could detect a slight yet distinct change in the yard. He closed his eyes. Yes, a perceptible, though subtle, change in the atmosphere, as though an errant breeze had blown across his islands, then carried the scent and taste of the Azores here, to give life to the dry, hot monotony of San José. He could feel it caress his face, blow gently against the hairs on his arms.

  He closed his eyes. Is it possible, he wondered, for a person to be in two places at the same time, to be both here and there? It was the only explanation: his body was trapped here, while his heart and soul were where they had always been—on the islands from which they could never be severed.

  His reverie was shattered by the sound of the children rushing home from school. José, Luís, Maria Antónia, and Maria Lourdes burst into the yard and surrounded their father, who remained in his chair, staring fondly at his displaced bit of homeland.

  “Why aren’t you at work, father?” Maria Antónia asked. She spoke Portuguese, though she and the other children were learning English very rapidly. Their father, however, had been unable to grasp the complexities of that language. It left a bad taste in his mouth; he thought the sound of English was harsh and vulgar, unlike Portuguese, which was a sweet song.

  He patted his daughter’s head as if to dispel her silly question.

  “Yes,” the others said. “Why are you home?”

  “They decided to let me out early today, that’s all.” It wasn’t true, but he couldn’t tell them he had lost yet another job. At the same time, he wouldn’t be able to keep it from them for long. Maria Isabel would have to know and, as in the past, would be very upset.

  “Run along,” he told the children. “Go off and play.”

  They left Fernando alone, ruminating upon the adaptability of children, who could be happy no matter where they were.

  Maria Isabel came home late that evening. They spoke after the children had gone to bed. “You have to find a job you can keep,” she said. “We need money for food, for rent.”

  “I cannot keep a job where I am not needed,” he told her. Where they only gave you work for which there was no need, due to a vague obligation to his family name.

  “Then find another.”

  “Work isn’t easy to find,” he said. “Jobs seem to evaporate here just like water.”

  “Do not joke. What about the bills?”

  “I’ll find something tomorrow.”

  Later that evening, lying in bed, he was aroused by the sound of waves breaking. He heard an eerie cry and woke his wife.

  “Isabel, Isabel, wake up.”

  “What?”

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “A cagarra. A cagarra in the yard.”

  “Go back to sleep. You were dreaming. There are no such birds here.”

  He was certain he had heard one of those strange creatures, whose cry was so human-like that the superstitious believed it to be a fateful portent.

  Fernando smiled as he drifted back to sleep. Only in a place as peaceful and quiet as the Azores could you hear the ocean’s roar, or the cries of birds which some believed were the souls of children who had died by drowning. Such stillness and silence didn’t exist in this place of traffic and noise.

  He shuffled through the days, searching for someone who owned a business and who was Portuguese, someone who would remember and say: “Ah, yes, this is Senhor Noronha, a good man.” Not a man who should go around begging for a job, who should do menial work, who should get paid next to nothing.

  He returned home each afternoon, seeking refuge in his garden, where the Azorean soil had seeped into the ordinary dirt of the backyard, transforming it, bringing a volcanic propensity for life. Such dirt contained both history and memory, it was where dreams took root and flourished.

  He watered his patch of Azorean soil and sat staring at it, for what seemed like several minutes. But, when he finally rose, several hours had passed.

  There was shade here, cool winds and the scent of familiar flowers.

  One day he came home to find another box, this one sent by Jorge Ribeiro, a writer who lived on Pico. It was a very small box this time. He opened it cautiously and found it contained a shell.

  Fernando, smiling like a saint, took the shell and set it on the patch of soil.

  Maria Isabel arrived home in a sour mood. “We need money,” she reminded him. “You must find a job, Fernando! What will we eat?”

  “I am looking,” he said. “What do you want me to do? Nobody wants to pay me to work.” He had tried working as a gardener and in a factory, jobs for which he had no experience, no training. It was hard enough to find such a job. But then to find one that paid a decent wage, one that you could keep, that was another matter altogether. Because he couldn’t speak proper English, he had to find work among the Portuguese, but there were many Portuguese who wouldn’t hire him because of his family name. Unlike them, he hadn’t spent his entire life working with his hands. His family had once been wealthy aristocrats, but that had been a long time ago, at the turn of the century, before the revolution that had toppled the monarchy. Things had changed since then. Though he was willing to do almost anything, his family history had set him apart. In the eyes of those to whom he appealed for work, nothing had changed. They couldn’t imagine an aristocrat doing menial work. And they themselves were squeamish about hiring him.

  “Anyone else would have found a job by now,” Maria Isabel said. “Anyone else wouldn’t give up.”

  “I will find something,” he said, hoping the next day would bring a miracle, but knowing that miracles were few in this land.

  That night he listened to the Azorean winds blowing across the garden, rattling the glass in the windows, moaning dark secrets in their ever-melancholy voices.

  The next morning he approached the radio stations, hoping to find one he could interest in a Portuguese radio program, as he and Isabel had done several years earlier. Shortly after arriving in California, they had aired their own Portuguese show in San Leandro. They’d written the scripts and acted the parts, using their children, friends, and neighbors as actors too.

  In addition to appearing on the radio, the family had put on plays and musical shows at Portuguese halls and high schools up and down the San Joaquin Valley: Los Banos, Modesto, Hayward, Merced, Gustine, Turlock. At the same time, they had written articles and poetry for Portuguese newspapers. Later they had moved their show to another station, in San José. But in time that station had shut down.

  “It’s too bad we don’t have the money to start our own radio station,” he’d said to Maria Isabel.

  “Radio?” she’d said. “We are still paying debts and you want to have a radio station?”

  “Our shows were very popular,” he explained to the men who owned the stations where he applied for work. “We wrote scripts that were interesting, funny—people laughed.

  “We also reported on what was happening back home on the islands, about all the changes Salazar’s government said were finally being made. At last, we thought, things were improving
for the people—until we went back and saw for ourselves that nothing had been done. It was all lies.

  “We had been lied to, and had unwittingly helped to spread those lies through the newspapers and radio. No schools were being built, no hospitals. Life in the islands was just as difficult as it had always been. So we came back and printed the truth. We showed the people that nothing had changed, and since then we cannot go back. Personae non gratae.

  “Our competition ran their silly programs, and didn’t like us,” he confided, reminiscing. “They said terrible things about us, so we returned the favor. More people began listening just to hear our fights.

  “But after some time business fell. The radio station closed.”

  The station managers shook their heads. “We’re sorry,” they said. “We have nothing to offer you.” They held out empty hands. There was nothing they or anyone else could do.

  Fernando drifted listlessly through the town, wishing for another job, wishing to escape, wishing to see his home, to leave this country that seemed to turn people into beggars: please give me a job, please pay me enough to support my family, please let me keep my job, my future.

  He occasionally stopped at a café to read the Portuguese newspaper, or to sit and think, while he sipped his coffee. The day would slip by quickly, leaving him with little time to search for work. It wasn’t that he didn’t try—it was just that a person could only try so hard.

  In the Azores of old there would have been no such trouble. He’d had friends all over, and the government saw to it that he had a position in one of their countless offices. There was no money, of course. The family had lost its wealth when his father was still a young man. The manor house that the family had owned, and in which he had been born, was nothing more than a distant memory. It had been sold and turned into an orphanage. Even with his government job, and Maria Isabel’s ability to make do with little or nothing, there was certainly not enough on which to raise four children. Then a bad business venture—he and Isabel had tried to start their own newspaper—left them with debts to pay. That was why they had come to America at the end of the war. Here, they thought, their children would have a chance for a better life.

  But this country had nothing to offer him. What did America want with his paintings, his Portuguese poetry? What did America care about his noble family? Here he was just a nobody, like millions of other nobodies.

  Jobs came and went, and Fernando found it was possible to work yourself to death in this country without ever having anything to show for it.

  A few weeks later, there was another addition to his Azorean garden: a piece of basalt, sent by Laurinda Pacheco, a schoolteacher from Faial. Fernando wasted no time finding the perfect place to set the volcanic rock. With each new item, the garden grew more comfortable; there was a scent of life now, too, where before there had been only the arid heat.

  He sought a temporary escape in his proliferating garden, attempting to shut out the cares and problems that threatened to engulf him.

  The Azorean soil inched farther across the yard, expanding and regenerating itself, spreading bit by bit to cover the lifeless California dust. He smelled the fresh sea air, felt the wind and the veil of humidity of his island. He drank glasses of Azorean liqueur and apologized again and again for leaving the isles.

  “How deep has the dirt gone?” he wondered. Perhaps the volcanic soil grew and spread deep down into the earth. If only he could dig down far enough and reach the Azores himself.

  If he didn’t know better, he’d have suspected that Maria Isabel—and perhaps even some of his neighbors—had mailed more boxes of dirt from the Azores to fill the yard. The idea amused him. Isabel would say that dirt was dirt, no matter where it was from. But of course there were worlds of difference. The proof was in what was taking place right here in their own yard.

  He thought of his children. They watched American movies and listened to the radio, able to decipher that incomprehensible language. They longed to be Americans. Perhaps it was a good thing after all. But to forget Portuguese? To forget the Azores, and their name? To forget who they were?

  When he wasn’t out looking for work, Fernando eased the pain of his exile by setting up his paints and canvas out in the yard and painting scenes from the islands: the stone streets and whitewashed houses, the view from his youngest daughter’s bedroom window in São Roque, the green fields of Pico and the sea.

  In the mornings, from the dreamy vantage point of his flowering garden, he sat where he could occasionally see Pico in the distance, breaking through its shroud of clouds. And in the evenings, after sunset, he walked through the yard, smoking his pipe, recapturing it all, the way he had once drifted through the park along the Avenida da Conceição. He breathed the fragrant smell of flowers, sweeping aside vines and thick-leafed branches, as he recalled the familiar pleasures of Azorean life.

  Maria Isabel was relieved when Fernando finally announced that he had obtained a job as janitor at one of the radio stations. His family was more than thankful, for to them it was a godsend. But to him it was one more cruel twist of fate, painfully reminding him of what his family had once possessed; he was reduced to cleaning up after others at a radio station, as opposed to having a radio program of his own.

  Fernando swallowed his pride and performed the work he was assigned. It was one thing for the people from the islands who had known only poverty their whole lives, he thought. He too was poor, but he kept his dignity and did not forget who he was. They couldn’t take that away from him.

  His cousin had been president of Portugal before Salazar seized control of the country; his ancestors included kings, queens, and captains who had carried the Portuguese flag to Morocco and India, Africa and Brazil.

  Even now, whenever people recognized his name, he would recount for them stories about these famous ancestors, sighing, listing their illustrious accomplishments over and over as if, by repeating them, he might somehow restore the family’s position.

  Sometimes, while he mopped the floor or polished a counter at the radio station, he would pause, lost in some distant remembrance. Though he often stopped to chat with whoever happened to drop by, he did his job with his jaw set in fierce determination. Nobody was going to say that he was too proud or too stubborn, that he thought himself too grand, or that he was unable to work like everyone else. Maria Isabel and Fernando withdrew from one another, each retreating into a profound silence. She was different from him. She was tough and would let nothing and no one hold her back. Isabel found work easily, gave piano lessons, could speak English and French. She would make do, whatever the resources, or the lack of them. She had that natural ability to create something out of nothing. And while she had less and less to do with him, she seemed to prefer her work to almost anything else.

  She resented what she saw as her husband’s lack of industry, his inability to better provide for his family. He wasn’t like her grandfathers, whom she adored and whose memory she constantly invoked. One had left his island, on an American whaling ship at the age of seventeen, and had become a farmer in California; the other had started a successful business on the island of Pico.

  She accused Fernando of being a dreamer. “You must make yourself useful,” Isabel said.

  She had summed up the problem. He was of no use in this time and this place. He should have been born a century or two earlier.

  “I do what I can,” he answered. Was it his fault if he wasn’t like the common men and women who toiled endlessly in their daily lives? Could they write poetry and plays, could they paint or play the violin, or discuss the finer points of literature?

  “What have you been doing anyway,” she said, “but sitting in the yard and staring at the dirt as if you hadn’t a care in the world?”

  “Staring,” he mumbled. “You’ve noticed the changes, too?”

  “Changes? What changes?” Isabel said. “What are you talking about?”

  “The garden.”

  “Are you crazy
? What garden? Who has time to plant a garden?”

  She hadn’t noticed the new soil, then. She couldn’t see the wondrous transformation that he watched day after day.

  Fernando swallowed his pride and went back to work, sweeping and scrubbing, bending beneath the growing weight of indignity and disillusion in order to clothe and feed his family. But at the end of the day he returned home, holding his head high.

  “I will not allow the world to crush me,” he said to himself, looking forward to escaping into the sanctity of the garden.

  His old friend, Rui Fagundes, had sent another box—not nearly as large as the first one, it was true, but still welcome. Fernando poured out the soil of home, further enlarging his garden.

  The garden had become an oasis, providing shelter from the harsh heat of San José—the heat that dried up dreams, that baked love out of existence and vanquished one’s hopes.

  Maria Isabel came home and informed him that she was going to rent an apartment near San Francisco. She had been working at a new job there, shuttling back and forth for several weeks. Now she had decided to go there, with the children.

  “You stay here, Fernando, and continue to work at your job.”

  Fernando bid a tearful good-bye to each of his children, then to his wife, and finally saw them off. The children waved farewell. They promised to write and visit often. The loss he felt wasn’t due only to the coming separation, but to the realization that his children were changing so quickly he was afraid he would no longer recognize them.

  Maria Isabel and Fernando left the future unspoken.

  That afternoon his garden beckoned again, whispered for him to leave behind his troubles and seek solace where the past was preserved, only a few steps away.

  In the days that followed, Fernando resumed the pace of daily life, going to work, paying bills, cooking his meals. But one day he found the entrance to a side street in the far corner of the yard. He wandered aimlessly down the street that seemed so hauntingly familiar. He turned up another street and, an hour or two later, stood facing the house where he had once lived in Horta, with two pigs in the yard—a fat one named Mussolini and a skinny one named Hitler. They had slaughtered these pigs to celebrate the end of the war and the end of those fascist leaders who had caused so much death and destruction. The plants in his San José yard thickened and spread; they did not form a typical veil but a dense impenetrable wall. Many bore the varieties of fruit that grew so plentifully on the islands—fruit he hadn’t seen or tasted for several years. They hung down from the green canopy in clusters: tomate capush, coração negro, cherimolia, tiny sweet bananas, and maracujá.