1 The Return

1902

The man scowled as he drew on what appeared to be a new pipe. He was tall, ruddy, and thick-lipped, with a port-wine stain spread like a hand across his neck. Smoke blew into his eyes. He swore and dumped the contents of the pipe onto the black stone pier. With large knuckled hands he broke a blade of sharp rush growing near the dock and jabbed it into the pipe bowl. All the while he alternated his gaze between the screw-steamer Esperança, at anchor in the harbor, and Carlos.

"You from around here?" the man asked.

Carlos wondered if a lie or the truth would better quell the man’s curiosity. He shook his head.

"You remind me of someone."

Carlos put his hand to the left side of his face. The eye patch rubbed against the scar on his left temple, and he slid a finger under the band to loosen it. He recalled two brothers he’d known on Faial—shore-based whalers with burly shoulders and bad tempers. The man at the pier seemed more near-sighted than bad-tempered, his scowl deepening as he stared at the clouds offshore.

"An outlander then?" the man asked.

"Yes," Carlos said.

It was what he’d become. He knew no one; no one knew him. He was diminished from the man he’d been when he left the Azores. Seven years ago he was as heavily muscled as the man with the pipe. Now, returning from a different island chain halfway round the world, he was thinner, harder. He’d grown so on those other islands where a man, if he was lucky, if he worked hard, might outlive his fate, might become someone else. Gazing on the wall of cloud that barred the way home, he felt he was someone else. It was not who he’d hoped to be.

During convalescence in Honolulu, Carlos had dreamed repeatedly of Maria standing at the wellhead surrounded by hydrangeas. Each time he smelled the sweet water, the fragrant blue petals, and Maria’s black hair. Each time Maria, unsmiling, reached out to run her hand over his face, her touch restoring sight to his injured eye. Each time a second dream washed over the first. A small canoa sailed toward a gray mass floating on a gray sea; as the boat drew near, the mass heaved up and cast a black shadow over the crew. In the narrow hospital bed Carlos would wake, the two dreams sharp in his mind. One seemed to offer life, the other death. Now, near the end of the long journey, the smell of burning tobacco on the air and the stern of the Esperança covered in mist, Carlos prayed for life.

*

For two days Carlos and the other passengers waited for the weather to clear. On the morning of the third day, less than a fortnight before the feast of the Holy Ghost, the wind veered from southwest to north, and the sea grew calm. Clouds lifted from water and land, and a high white haze covered the sky. At seven-thirty the Esperança—near the midway point of the eighteen-hundred-mile roundtrip between the Portuguese mainland and the island of Faial—left Villa das Vellas for the port town of Horta.

Carlos stood at the starboard rail and rested his weight on his right leg. A mild wind coated his new-grown beard with salt, and sea spray wet the legs of his trousers. At the back of his left knee the softened wound began to itch, and he resisted the urge to scratch it. He breathed in the iodine-scented air, listened to the sounds of crates shifting and cattle lowing in the hold, and felt the familiar lift of spirits that came with sailing on a fair sea.

Beside him at the rail, a frail man coughed bright-red blood into the water. A woman held a white handkerchief to the man’s mouth. Her long brown cloak fell in folds over her hair and body. Both she and the man wore coarse-woven socks and rough cowhide sandals. Carlos realized he knew the couple—in seven years they’d changed as much as he. The woman, once slim, was round-bellied and soft-faced; the corners of her eyes were creased with lines. The man’s hands shook as he held the rail. When his coughing stopped and breathing eased, the woman led him toward out of the wind. As they passed Carlos, the man slipped and Carlos reached out to steady him. The man smiled faintly, murmuring, "Your sea legs are better than mine." Then his eyes slid past Carlos with no sign of recognition.

Nearby the ruddy-faced man with the poorly drawing pipe shook his head.

"An old story," he said.

He pointed the pipe in the direction of Carlos’s eye patch and then cane.

"What happened to you?"

"An accident."

That was true enough.

The man struck a fresh match to his pipe, and the smell of sulfur carried on the wind.

"Is that so?"

Carlos smiled to make amends for the lie he was about to tell and held out his hand.

"Lucas Almeida."

The man, whose name was Manuel Sousa, gripped Carlos’s hand tightly.

"Well, Lucas Almeida, I’ve decided you’re no outlander after all, but an Americano returning with his sack of money."

"That’s not what I would say."

"What would you say?"

Carlos pointed off the rail.

"Land."

Sunlight had broken through the haze, and the islands of Pico and Faial lay in clear view. The ship steamed through the five-mile channel that ran between the islands, turning right toward the harbor at Horta. On one side of the channel seven-thousand-foot-high volcano Pico Alto dominated the skyline; on the other side the low hills of Faial rose over the harbor. Monte de Guia, the steep-sided four-hundred-foot mountain peninsula connected by a thin isthmus to the main part of Faial, framed the southwest end of Horta. Next to it, nearer the harbor, was smaller Monte Queimado, or Burnt Mountain, whose bare sides were streaked with soil layers of black, red, and brown.

The breakwater had been extended, and basalt rocks were piled at the seaward leading edge. Three telegraph-cable ships and two freighters were anchored in the outer harbor. There were no whale ships in port, the fishery in decline long before Carlos left the Azores. Left were the plum-puddingers from New Bedford, who each September stopped in Horta to take on fresh stores and ship oil, and the island shore-based whalers, whose row of canoas with protective coverings was set before the boat shed.

Carlos ran his eye along the covered boats until he reached the shed. Sometime during the past seven years the south end had collapsed into rubble. Earthquake, he thought, and looked north—past the inner harbor with its small fishing boats, the old Jesuit buildings, the open market, the clock tower—to the uphill lane leading to the Kelley house. Sighting the rise of smoke from the big chimney, he was unsure if he felt relief or regret. He told himself he could remain aboard ship, and make the return journey to that other ocean without disembarking at Horta. He’d written no letters, sent no telegrams. For all anyone knew he was dead. And in truth he might die if he failed to go ashore. Saudade. An old story.

He felt a movement beside him, and turned to see Sousa holding out his hand. The pipe was tucked into the breast pocket of his jacket.

"Stop by my store," Sousa said. "If you need anything at all, I can get it for you."

Carlos stood to the side as passengers pushed toward the gangway. At the landing a crowd gathered—barefoot men in mattress-ticking pants and reed hats, merchants with newspapers under their arms, chaperoned women in high-domed capotes é capelos. Seeing the latter, Carlos was struck anew by the strangeness of the traditional garment of Faial’s society women. Had it descended from the church or the Moors? One young woman’s vivid-blue hood, likely braced with whalebone, rose six inches above her head and curved bell-like around her face, down the back of her head and neck, and onto her shoulders. The loose folds of the cape reached the ground and covered her arms, hands, and body. Only her face, closely framed by a white scarf, was visible. A man with broad-brimmed black hat, red waist sash, and graying whiskers gripped her arm. Other women—seemingly American or English with a few Azoreans among them—wore European-style dresses and hats. Near the back of the crowd the country women were dressed in black or blue skirts and bright kerchiefs, the same clothing his mother wore every day of her short life and his late mother-in-law, a descendant of Lisbon dons, turned into an act of contrition.

Skirting the crowd was a group of young men, of which two were chasing a third. They caught him near the pier, and shoved him back and forth between them while a small boy pulled on their shirttails. They cuffed the boy away, but he returned and began throwing rocks. Then the third man, either by his own volition or the force of a blow, fell onto the dock. In an instant he was up and away from the aggressors, who were now impeded by the crowd, and the boy was fast behind him. The two figures—one short, one tall—sprinted toward the main road. They had a familiar air that Carlos failed to place. It was more their gaits, which was high stepping and light, than their black hair and fair skin.

The last of the disembarking passengers surged past Carlos. He lifted his valise and, leading with his cane, limped to the uneven wood ladder descending to the quay. Slowly he made his way onto the landing and into the crowd. He saw Sousa ahead shove past a stout woman in black and three thin-faced children. An opening in the crowd allowed a glimpse of the light-stepping man and boy climbing the embankment to the road. Carlos took the long route along the black-and-white patterned stone path that lead through the tall palms of Praça do Infante. He lost sight of the pair as they fled north toward the center of town.

From the top of Monte de Guia came the sharp report of a signal rocket. On the quay silence fell. A white tern flew low over the crowd, and then lifted out over the channel. Then someone shouted, "Baleia!" and men ran down the narrow streets to the harbor. Swiftly they pulled the protective covers from the canoas and carried the boats to water’s edge. Carlos, heart-struck, gripped his cane. No grip was tight enough to hold back the past.