The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales

by Darrell Kastin

  “How did you lose your leg?”

  “By forgetting about it for too long.”

  “And the old woman—will she be angry?”

  “It’s okay, Miguel. She is becoming used to me. I’m like an adopted son to her. She only feels she is helping out by insisting I get out of the house, that I make friends.”

  “You have many friends, senhor.”

  “Yes, Miguel. The best of friends, too.”

  The ghost led the nearly blind man down the road towards the house. “You should see the stars tonight, senhor.”

  “I can, Miguel. I see them beautifully. Part of me is up there.” He nodded his head at the evening sky. “I am proof that someone can be in many places at the same time. That, I believe, is the true meaning of the word saudade. Not being parted from something, but being torn apart yourself, having parts of you missing, for being with someone or somewhere far away.

  “That could be why we Portuguese are known for our sadness,” Miguel said.

  “Perhaps. With so many Portuguese spread all over the world, it means there are so many with parts of themselves left somewhere else.”

  They approached the house and Miguel turned to his friend. “Senhor, what if the old lady asks you where you’ve been? Will you tell her?”

  “No, don’t worry. I’ll tell her I was at a café. That will keep her pleased. She doesn’t need to know how bad things are.”

  “No.”

  “She doesn’t understand the way things are. There is no need to hide from the future any more than from the past. In the graveyard they are all one; after all, you don’t refuse a newcomer to the soil, do you?”

  “No, we all get along, and no one is more or less than his or her neighbor. Even ancient enemies find ways to lose the cause of their disputes.”

  “And that’s the way it should be. The living could certainly take a few lessons from the dead, if you ask me. It would be a far better world.”

  “She is afraid for you, senhor.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been with this too long to be afraid anymore.”

  They walked up the steps of the house. Inside, they were greeted by the rich smells of dinner cooking. As they went down the hall, the landlady opened her door. “Ah, back so soon, senhor. Did you have a nice walk? Would you like some tea? Come in, come in. How are you feeling? Better?”

  “Good evening, senhora.” Gaspar stopped and tipped his hat to Senhora Figueiredo, who was flustered and excited to the point she had forgotten to say good evening. “I’m fine, thank you. Boa tarde.”

  “Boa tarde, senhor.”

  Gaspar and Miguel continued down the hall.

  “Pobrezinho, you poor man, you should make some friends,” Senhora Figueiredo continued. “It is not right that you should be alone.”

  “I am never alone, senhora.”

  Senhora Figueiredo clearly mistook his words, for she touched the crucifix on her breasts and sighed with deep reverence.

  Gaspar smiled and waved good-bye. They entered his room and sat down at the table by the window. They stared out at the night.

  “Do you miss the United States, amigo?”

  “No, not really,” Gaspar said. Miguel looked up at him. “I remember, Miguel, and that is enough.”

  Gaspar lit a cigarette and sat back in his chair. Miguel continued to gaze at the stars through the window. The two made quite a contrast with one another, Gaspar, tall and thin, with wavy gray hair, and Miguel, short, stocky, with straight, dark hair and thick muscular arms.

  They sat, silently taking in the night, listening to quiet music on the radio. The sound of the planet spinning, the sounds of restless life on the island, the sounds of the ocean. A voice singing a plaintive note, drifting across the starlit night from afar, or welling up from the deepest depths of the sea.

  ~ ~ ~

  Gaspar Henriques knew plenty about disappearing. Over the years he had vanished so often, it had become second nature to him—at first unwittingly, without foresight or planning, the realization coming after the fact. Like a light switched on and off, it just happened. He might walk into a restaurant or office building unaware that he was invisible, watching people walk right past without seeing him, speaking but getting no response in return. Or he might enter to find all eyes fixed on him, as if he were a ghost who had suddenly materialized in their midst.

  He began to practice and perfect the art of fading in and out, willing himself invisible.

  Whenever he had left his home in Los Angeles, it seemed the city scrambled like mad, changing what had once been there, altering the landscape to fill the gaps his absence created—as though the city wanted to eliminate all traces of him, to make him a stranger in his own city. Or perhaps he never truly belonged. It was this that contributed to the feeling that he was sometimes being pushed or pulled along, called to other places.

  Once his children had grown, his wife removed herself from his life and quietly disappeared.

  Gaspar found himself wandering from place to place in search of something that eluded him, some distant or buried memory, a vague forgotten notion of himself.

  When he finally returned to Los Angeles, to settle down for what he thought was for good, he began to suspect that bits of him had been left all over the world. Every place and every person he’d come close to, all the people he had known, had kept some piece of him, and now there was little left.

  Over the years the message became louder, more insistent, if not clearer. He was a man who had left something behind, and he was now being called back. He’d lived too long in the wrong place, too long in the wrong time; that other time and place were calling him, pulling him, retrieving him.

  ~ ~ ~

  Gaspar Henriques sat in the graveyard with Mariana. She was shy but very fond of him, and even the silence which often hung in the air somehow seemed to connect the two, not coming between them or making those moments awkward in any way, but often making for an understanding that went beyond the need for words or touch.

  Gaspar didn’t stop to think whether it was crazy for him to be falling in love with the dead girl, a woman who had died a hundred years earlier. Still, he was certain that time, with all its peculiar convolutions, gave one deceptive glimpses of how past, present, and future formed strange geometric designs which allowed him on occasion to view two or more, the here and now as well as the past and present, at the same moment.

  Though he never spoke of his feelings, they were inseparable from his words, his posture and gestures, his tone of voice, and above all the radiance that gleamed from his blue eye.

  “What did you like to do,” Gaspar asked, “when you were still alive?”

  “I loved to dance,” Mariana said. “There was nothing I loved more in life.”

  “Were you married, Mariana?” The woman lowered her head.

  “No. I died too young to find love. And, besides, I was so devoted to dance. And you?”

  “Well, I thought so at the time. However it proved to be a disaster. For years I never had the time. At first having a family, then later always moving, traveling. When I settled down again I lived mostly in books, my work at the library, doing research.”

  “That is a shame,” she said. “I believe you would make a good husband.”

  Gaspar blushed. “Thank you. You are kind.”

  “Do you miss your family?”

  “Strangely enough, not really. They have their own families now. We are worlds apart in many ways. It’s been a long while since I’ve talked to them. And, when we do, we find we have nothing to say to one another.”

  Gaspar loved nothing more than to talk with Mariana and hear her sing. Her words buoyed him whenever she told him about her life, her family. Her presence was a current that electrified the night as well as him.

  “Why couldn’t we have met when you were alive?”

  “You weren’t born yet,” she said quietly.

  He laughed. “Are you embarrassed because I’m a younger man?” he asked. �
��It’s okay, Mariana, for you haven’t aged a day since your death, remember?” She smiled, nodded. “In our time you are still as young as ever.”

  Mariana sang quietly, hushed words of bittersweet love, of parted lovers, of sorrow-filled lives and unfulfilled dreams, the haunting melodies and lyrics of the fados. She sang beautifully. And as she sang the wind swept up tiny fragments of tender partings, of early deaths, of steep, cobbled streets and ports of call in distant lands, of loved ones sailing in the crowded holds of ships, of longing, intense undying longing and streams of tears.

  Gaspar closed his eyes and listened, the fragments blowing about like leaves playing in the wind around his feet. And in this place of cold gravestones and lifeless, silent tombs, her voice and her words carried him away. Even after the song had ended and the last words trailed off, the thread of life connecting them was forever altered and strengthened.

  “Do you believe in life after death?” she said.

  “I believe in anything that keeps love and the miracle of life alive.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Gaspar Henriques had in a way withered. It seemed at first that life was losing hold of him, the ground pulling him closer. That feeling had steadily grown.

  He had moved quickly through the world, unconscious of time, sound, or distance. At each stop he had made, with each person he had dared come close to, he felt himself slipping out from under his own two feet, as though he would fade away or sink into the ground. He moved to keep himself intact. But as he grew older, he slowed, and felt the increasing weight, the source of which he couldn’t name, push down on him until he knew he could go no more.

  Gone were those times when he could strip his clothes off and work his body flat and wide, concentrating until it truly looked like a sail, or a parachute, and from a treetop or roof he could fall without falling, gliding down as he held his flattened arms and legs out to catch the winds.

  Now he felt heavy, leaden. He had become magnetized; he felt the tug and pull of the earth’s center. He could no longer run from that. The earth called to him, louder, more insistent. It called to reclaim him—until he found the cemetery at Quebrado do Caminho.

  He explained it at first as the effects of some sickness. After all, he had grown very thin. But then there was the fact that while, on the physical level he had slowed, had weakened, at the same time he had come here—to this graveyard on Pico—in a blink of an eye, as if some gravitational force or powerful magnetism had pulled him on a string, bending its own rules of physics to do so. He felt less himself and yet somehow more himself, and also changed, a man caught in two worlds at the same time. But for what purpose?

  ~ ~ ~

  “How is the island doing?” Miguel asked, his voice like the hum of a thousand singing insects.

  “It is still working its way to the surface, slowly, but steadily, I believe. Did I ever show you my scrapbook?” Of course he had, many times, but Miguel asked to see it nonetheless. Gaspar pulled the book from the low shelf near his chair and opened it. Aside from the table, the chairs, and the shelf, there was only a bed and nightstand in the room. Gaspar had asked Senhora Figueiredo to remove all the other furniture when he had moved in.

  The book was a treasure trove. There were pictures of the island off Capelinhos, in Faial, and a list of the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that had occurred on the islands over the centuries. There were numerous clippings of newspaper and magazine articles, with dates and locations, as well as pictures of ruined buildings, notations concerning the explosion in 1444 of the mountainside on São Miguel that resulted in Sete Cidades, as well as the 1563 eruption, which created the Lagoa do Fogo, an eerie region of bleak inhospitable landscapes, of icy cold winds and clouds clinging to the mountaintops, where mists shroud the surface of the lake more often than not.

  There were notes about the 1620 eruption of Lake Barrenta, in São Miguel, which spewed rocks and ash for several days over a wide area. In Terceira an eruption occurred on July 3, 1638, offshore at Ponta do Queimado, forming an island which then slowly disappeared. In December of 1720, an eruption between the islands of São Miguel and Terceira formed an island about the size of Corvo. It remained until 1723, when it subsided beneath the surface. It is identified on sea charts as the banks of Dom João de Castro.

  “I have always been fascinated by the sea around these islands. As you can see, I have studied the activities quite carefully.”

  “It is a magnificent scrapbook,” Miguel said.

  “Yes, but they are only pictures, of events long past. I, however, want to see below the surface, I want to find what is happening now, what will be.”

  “But is that possible, senhor?”

  “The world insists it isn’t, my friend.”

  “There is much we cannot know.”

  Gaspar leaned over and turned on the radio.

  “Perhaps the radio will say something about a new island,” Miguel said.

  “The trouble with knowing or learning about anything,” Gaspar said, “is of course a matter of the limitations of the source of the information which you are looking for.”

  With the droning buzz of the warm air drifting in through the window, and the hum of the radio, Gaspar dreamed. He dreamed of the heat of summer, the oppressive atmosphere, the restraints of rules imposed by a world set upon imposing limitations and restrictions. Even the clothes he wore seemed to hold him back.

  He remembered the dizzying restraint of the city, smothered by the asphalt and the concrete, where the force of gravity kept even dreams at ground level.

  He yearned to dive beneath the waves, to stay on the bottom and swim with the creatures of the sea, to climb to the top of Pico and blow the clouds from his face. He sought refuge when and where he could, but such havens were painfully inadequate, as well as far and few between: listening to the lowing of the nearby cows, the bleating of the goats, the chirps of crickets; smelling the wild roses and lilac blooming.

  Even then he wrestled with the discoveries he made, seeing and doing things his friends could neither see nor do. He felt at ease in the water, going farther and deeper with each new venture; finding a secret spring in the hills where time did somersaults; climbing the heights of Pico as well as the mountains of São Jorge and knowing them to be hollow, connected to one another by subterranean caverns and tunnels, connected to deeper secret chambers below the sea, where legends of the past slept and dwelt, awaiting the moment when they would reappear, rising from the past.

  He remembered tapping out signals with a rock upon the mountains, a message to its silent, shy inhabitants; crawling once upon a ledge of rock above Sete Cidades and, for a few brief seconds, floating above the ground, above the mountain and the depths below; lying awake at night, thinking of the mysterious mist-enshrouded girl who waited for him, who promised to be his, sending her powerful telepathic messages, punctuated with countless I-love-yous.

  The nights awoke new senses, and he sometimes sat trembling in his bed, tempted to sneak outside, but at the same time fearful of finding what he was sure would be there waiting, things of shadow and of light, gaping bottomless depths, things from the edge of death, the terrifying traps of unleashed imagination.

  There were countless things hidden, but real nonetheless. He saw proof of it every day: the muffled cries beneath the black shrouds of frozen lava, drowned out by the crashing sea. The strange language of the cagarras, the roar of the wind, the songs which floated like mists across the water, wind and rain that lashed with unleashed fury against the tiny islands, sweeping away roofs, stone walls, trees, sheep and goats. There was the sound you could hear in the mistérios, those long frozen tubes of lava, or the small craters on the sides of the mountains, where wind sometimes blew up from the very center of the earth, or the far-off sound of water and an echo whispering, “None of this is real.” He shuddered to think of the possibilities. Was he really seeing things—things others couldn’t—or was he creating it all himself?

  He stayed in bed s
everal days, feeling if not sick, at least different, shedding old skins, becoming a new him beneath a new skin. His room was the universe, and nothing lay beyond. It felt better that way. He tossed and turned on the rough seas of his blankets, crawled across frozen wastes on the ice floes of his sheets, and roamed through dizzying heights of space.

  There he studied the surfaces of the moon and Mars.

  “Powers of the mind,” he whispered shutting his eyes tightly. “Concentration.” There he pondered all the imponderables, and always, he felt, the answers, the solutions, just beyond his reach, as if his senses interfered with his ability to comprehend.

  He suspected that certain things never happened until they were thought of or dreamt, that imperceptibly he was creating the world as he imagined it, recognizing how it should be or could be, what was hidden behind the veils of reality: what was real, what was not. He quietly wondered whether there weren’t some special laws of limitations that governed and maintained the status quo, and if so, how he had managed to invert them.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Listen, Miguel, you know what you missed now?” Rosa said, bubbling over with excitement, as she read the newspaper Gaspar had brought to the cemetery.

  Gaspar had come to have a picnic with his friends. The day was a fine one, the weather clear and warm; there was a peacefulness which seemed to emanate from the ground itself, and that even affected the slight breeze that had arisen, playfully stirring a few leaves here and there, but which now seemed to find the task too much an effort, and left the scattered leaves to lay still.

  “No, and I don’t care to hear,” Miguel answered.

  “There was a will discovered, from an aunt or uncle of yours who passed away, leaving you a whole mountainside of fertile land.”

  “Thank you, dear wife. I need this woman hounding me, telling me every day what I missed! Ah, meu Deus! Yesterday it was the running of the bulls where five people were trampled to death; the day before that a new book of poetry by a favorite author; and before that a lottery. I swear, if only my bones weren’t buried here, I would go find another cemetery where perhaps I could finally get some peace.”