Barnacle Love (6 page)

“Thank you, Andrew.” Manuel is unsure of the offering. “I bless by you … and Pepsi. Thank you.”

Manuel begins to work his fingers around the package. He glances up, expecting to meet Pepsi’s gaze. He’s confused by the way she stares at his hands unraveling the string, flipping the gift over before lifting the center fold. Her eyes look at nothing else. In a split second his letters slip from his hands and fan themselves on the table.

The room begins to spin. Manuel glimpses the smirk on Andrew’s face, the tree, the perfectly browned chicken sitting in the middle of the set table, gleaming plates and flickering candles. The images swarm in his head. Bile rises from his stomach, sharp and sour. Then he sees Pepsi getting up and tripping over her lifeless leg. She cannot look at him. She falls down and drags herself the rest of the way across the floor. She reaches her threshold, pushes the door open with her shoulder and is swallowed by the dark mouth of her room. Manuel sits still and numb. The door closes. He hears the click of the lock and the din of his own silence over her father’s simmering laughter.

My boat skipped across the surface

of the great wide sea
,

so angry and cruel.

Yet, I danced and sang and smiled
,

tempted by the comfort

of my mind’s dream.

I will not stop my little boat

from skipping across the sea.

I will dance, sing, and live
,

but only live my dream for me …

WITH ANGUISH, MATEUS ALMEIDA
sings a fado, while his guests sit at his table and weep. Manuel’s ass leans against the edge of the counter. He wipes the glass with the tea towel, Mateus’s “No spots” chiming in his head. Mateus hired Manuel to do odd jobs in his boarding
house, and Manuel is grateful to him. At fifty, Mateus is immaculate in every way: he cuts a fine silhouette in his tailored clothes, his greased hair, and buffed nails; the way he turns down a bed, dipping his hands in a small bowl of warm water, flicking the excess before smoothing the lip of the downturned sheets with his moistened palm creating a sharp crease. “We were not born here, Manuel. You must always appear to be … more,” he says without a hint of superiority. The truth is Mateus can’t walk down to the harbor without men lifting their hats to him, even the bank manager who sits behind a desk with the glittering pocket watch and cauliflower nose. The women silently swoon as the children chase him like swarming hornets until he is forced to toss a nickel in the air, allowing enough time to get away.

“Remember this, Manuel: they
almost
think I am one of them. But, they never do … not completely.”

Mateus Almeida hangs on to the final note with his eyes closed. The young moths ping against the lightbulb that dangles, caught in a cloud of smoke, over the kitchen table. There is a reverent quiet as Mateus lays down his
guitarra.
Then Eduardo’s tobacco-stained teeth appear as he begins to clap. His friend Duarte begins to clap too, and soon it builds to a crescendo of clapping, grunting, and laughter. Mateus smiles and raises his hands in thanks. He pours the men another glass of
vinho.
The sailors are from the
Gil Eannes
, which came through the Narrows and entered the harbor of St. John’s that morning. Over the next two days, while the fishermen and all of St. John’s prepare for the city’s festivities, Mateus’s boarding house will be home to some of them.

“Manuel, come here,” he motions with his arm.

Manuel leaves the few remaining dishes to soak in the sink. “Yes, Senhor Mateus.” Apart from cleanliness, it is the only other condition Mateus insists on; there is to be nothing other than English spoken between them in his house. Mateus insists it is the only way to be a success in this country.

“Are the rooms ready for these men?”

“I make them ready this morning.”

“I prepared them this morning. P-r-e-p-a-r-e-d.” He looks at Manuel and is quite pleased to hear his pupil softly utter the word and phrase a couple of times to himself.

“Good. Now I’ll play my
guitarra
—you sing.”

“I no sing fado.”

“Are you Portuguese?” Duarte holds Manuel with his rodent-like eyes. “
Açoreano?
”

Mateus picks up his instrument again. It is Manuel’s cue to leave—he notices the twitch of Mateus’s L-shaped sideburns that thin to a pencil point before meeting his perfectly trimmed mustache—and he moves down the corridor. Mateus knows the story, how Manuel was left for drowned and that he was saved by a fisherman and his daughter. He also knows of the betrayal by the girl called Pepsi. He smiled when Manuel told him. It had angered Manuel to have his notion of love met with laughter. Until Mateus came home the next day with a coffee-colored liquid inside a bottle;
Pepsi-Cola
, the label read. Manuel tasted it and didn’t like it very much, too sweet. They had both smiled. Mateus knows of the struggle, how Manuel worked his way down the tiny
outports dotting Conception Bay until, somewhat exhausted and disillusioned, he settled in St. John’s and into Mateus’s home on the corner of Duckworth and Cathedral streets.

Manuel does not have the security of official papers and it is best that no one else knows he is here. The commander of the
Gil Eannes
—Portugal’s official representative in the North Atlantic—is in St. John’s. He is powerful, respected, and feared. Unlike some, he does not derive pleasure from the challenge of making the crooked straight. That is work. What he reveres is maintenance and control. The idea that Manuel drowned, his bloated body never skimmed from the sea’s frothy surface, is a blemish on his record. Even though he was not the
Argus
’s captain, he was responsible for all of the men signed to the White Fleet.

After five months Manuel’s room remains uncluttered, empty of anything that is his. There are a dozen or so letters addressed to his mother that may never be mailed. Manuel is uncertain of what it is he wants to say to her, whether he wants to remain. The letters were written at a time when the world lay sprawled in front of him, so full of hope and promise. He still wears his father’s gold crucifix and his old fisherman’s sweater. There is a single bed with a patchwork quilt, a simple night table (the drawer doesn’t open), an infuriating small lamp with a yellowing shade that he tilts to stop the bulb from flickering, a chipped stand-up ashtray, and a strong wooden chair—the last two things he drags every night to his window for a cigarette. Manuel doesn’t want to own anything—to feel the burden of having to care for
things. He’s young. He wants to be able to pick up and leave, go anytime.

Manuel can hear the tinkling of Mateus’s
guitarra;
his trembling vocals spill over from the kitchen window. Mateus never knew his father. At least Manuel has an image of his father firmly imprinted in his head that occasionally flings itself to the forefront of his thoughts. Mateus is certain his father was a fisherman, convinced he was lost at sea. His mother was a fishmonger in the open market in Lisbon; she never said much. Mateus is always there to greet the men of the White Fleet as they get off their ships. “They’ve been out for so long, so alone. We’re their family, now,” he says. Manuel believes that it is more of a hope—that Mateus will one day see his father step out onto the dock, out into the glaring sun, reclaimed.

Manuel’s room is on the top floor of the four-story house. He looks out his bay window, down toward the black harbor. It was last year that he had stepped off the great fishing vessel
Argus
and onto the dock to gaze at the wood-clad buildings and the twin towers of the church looming over this city. He looked upon the bustling port with slit eyes and grinned with wonder, delight. Now he thinks of his struggle to get back here. Manuel doubts if there is still a place for him in this Terra Nova, if his dream is worth holding on to.

He remembers the bitter night he left Pepsi in her little house on the hill, how the snow began to fall the very moment he stepped out the front door with a bundle on his back. He could see Brigus in the distance, a grouping of pinprick lights piercing the dark. He
thought he would be able to find work there, but there would be no work for a fisherman in December.

The next morning he came upon a sign,
EAST COAST ROPE AND LINE
, and attempted to open the door. Everything was locked and an eerie solitude lay among the small cluster of homes scattered in the distance.

He spent another night in an open shed behind the factory. The next day he was hired by a short man with no neck. Manuel was instructed to call him Mr. Johnson. He lasted three days working for this brutish little man who waddled along the factory aisle between fishermen, unsympathetic to their yearnings for the familiar roar of the sea. Manuel cut his hands as he guided the jute onto spools that spun wildly atop metal rods. When he could bear it no longer he took the money he was reluctantly offered and moved again. As long as he kept moving in the direction of St. John’s, he thought.

A couple days later he found himself in a smaller town where he met a few men who had gathered near a dock and who magically seemed to repel the splashing ocean that crashed against the concrete breaker. They were all dressed in tattered costumes, some in women’s garb. One of the men held a mask between his knees, the others had tied their veils around their necks. Manuel knew about these men who would wander from village to village at night, playing the fool with their ceremonial knocks. In Portugal, the new year always began with church and then a night of wild revelry. There was dancing and drinking, all disguised while greeting neighbors with “
boas festas!
” Manuel was warmed by these recollections of boyhood, dashing through the small village
singing old songs called
janeiras.
Once their true identities were guessed correctly the children were required to “unveil” and were rewarded with food or coins.

A few days later he found himself in a town with no name. Feeling abandoned, he turned about for some sense of direction. He was lost. A car passed by and stopped. The red curly hair and freckled face of a young man popped out the window. His name was Jack and he was on his way to St. John’s and just wanted someone to talk to. “A man gets lonely,” he said. “That’s why I’m searching for something more, understand? Something that ain’t going to be found on this here rock. Ontario’s where I’m goin’ to get me a future.” He shouted his conversation as if he were speaking over loud music. Manuel listened and nodded, grateful that he was warm and in the company of a good soul.

… Parched in my desert of loneliness.

Nothing left.

Bread, bitter and dry
,

is what I’m given for food.

I need nothing more.

Hope is my only companion.

Let me eat my bread

which I will moisten with wine …

Mateus’s voice is tiring. They will all be in bed soon. Manuel’s eyes land upon the men near the docks wearing mining lights strapped to their foreheads, casting their intersecting beams. That morning he looked down to the sea, to the piers in the harbor and the schooners of the
White Fleet. He had scanned the Battery to the west of him, the gray flat flakes cutting horizontal lines against the rusty cliffsides. He saw them on the docks beginning to lay the large square frame made of mashed ferns and bound with twine. They will work through the night decorating the posts along the streets of St. John’s with garlands of pine and cedar. It would certainly be a relief from the smell of fish and oil that wafted over the course of the day. The roads will be paved with colorful petals that mark the processional route. It is at this moment, with Mateus’s fado as a backdrop, that Manuel’s heart longs for home.

… But I will come to you.

The early promise

awakened by the sea

is now hidden in a mist

of fear of being alone …

It is a beautiful May morning. The crowds are beginning to trickle in, appearing around the corners and clumping along the roads that move from the wharves to the gates of St. John the Baptist Church set high on the ridge. Mateus has tried unsuccessfully to convince Manuel to attend mass with him on Sundays. He never pushes. There are too many scars …
those who serve me, serve God … it’s between us and God, understand?
The priest’s voice still haunts him.

The city is alive with a flurry of activity. Men scurry up poles like mice to connect loudspeakers. Earlier, the people of St. John’s, to be drawn into the celebration, had been asked by an ad in
The Telegram
to decorate their
homes and other buildings along the route. Wanting everyone to join in the festivities, parishioners knocked on the doors that lined the processional route, handing out colorful scrolls of silk to unfurl from their windows. The statue of
Nossa Senhora de Fátima
, Portugal’s gift of friendship, will be carried up to the church to receive a solemn benediction, then set up for temporary display before being placed in the carefully prepared alcove for idol worship.

Many of the Portuguese fishermen are working in hurried preparation. A small cluster of four is standing on the corner, directly underneath Manuel’s window. Their torsos disappear into burlap sacks and then reappear with greedy arms full of petals. Pink and blue hydrangea, scarlet dahlias, pale peonies, and golden sunflowers are slightly faded from the journey. The four men fill the geometric shapes within the frame with swatches of color, water the petals to weigh them down and prevent them from being blown away, then lift the large eight-by-eight template, careful not to disturb the stained glass–like mural that remains on the ground. Again, they tumble the frame over, dive into their burlap sacks, arms and fists full of petals to complete the next eight feet of fragile tapestry. They are working up the steep slope of Cathedral Street and will reach the church by noon, in time for the start of the procession.