10.The Captains’ Meeting

Do you remember the Famous Five adventures? Five Go to Mystery Moor and Five Go Off to Camp were my favourite stories because they were the most nocturnal. Well, you won’t believe it, but tonight I lived through exactly that sort of adventure, the kind where somebody says, “If anyone shows up, signal with the lights.”

As I told you, we went to the gathering of captains at Peter Café Sport. It is a legendary place within the global sailing community. It started out as a shop, but later moved closer to the harbour, and one of the owner’s sons decided to expand the premises and create a bar aimed at men of the sea. Peter was a sort of nickname given to the owner’s son who ran the bar; an English naval officer thought he looked like his son Peter, and the name stuck.

“I’m taking the opportunity to pick up the mail that’s waiting for me here,” said the Captain.

“The bar is a post office too?”

“Before emails and instant messages, sailors used to send their mail to Peter’s, which kept it and handed it over whenever they passed through. They say that even Chichester’s wife, who was a friend of Peter’s, used to send her letters here to be delivered to her husband.”

The blue façade with its two simple windows gives no indication of the size of the bar and restaurant inside, massively decorated with flags, nautical instruments, and other artefacts connected to the sea. As we entered, three men sitting at a table in the corner to the right of the entrance looked up. One of them stood up, moved a chair aside, and made room to pull another table over.

“Nemo, it’s been months since I last saw you,” said Captain Jackdaw with joy.

The man who had stood up to his full height in order to manoeuvre the table moved with restraint, as though every gesture had been rehearsed to convey discipline. He wore an old-fashioned dark navy coat with gleaming brass buttons, not a single stain of salt or dust upon it, so immaculate that it seemed entirely unsuited to life at sea. I found myself sharpening my sense of smell, trying to detect the scent of mildew and mothballs suspecting that the coat had been taken out of the wardrobe just for the occasion.

“You’ve been submerged for too long,” added the Captain, giving him a light pat on the shoulder.

The pull on the shoulder from the greeting did not stop him from staring at me with an expression drawn with a ruler. He had a thin smile of perfectly aligned teeth, perpendicular to a nose that descended in a straight line from a broad forehead, separating symmetrically two dark eyes wide apart from one another.

He seemed to have Indian features, but his skin was pale, almost translucent, as though all the blood had drained from it, a condition confirmed by the icy hand with which he greeted me.

“Long enough to freeze my hands, but not my heart,” he smiled, caressing my fingers.

“Kirk,” interjected another of the captains, wearing the youthful smile of a schoolboy on holiday and a minimalist uniform that looked as though it had come straight from one of those 1960s science-fiction magazines. His hair was far too neatly combed for a sailor, and his broad, almost innocent smile contrasted with the shrewd gaze of someone who had seen the far side of the universe and returned to tell the tale.

When he kissed my hand, there was a moment of hesitation, as though he were expecting a particular reaction, perhaps a quotation or a password shared between initiates in a club for fans of galactic adventures.

“But you can call me Jim,” he said.

And he winked at me as though we shared some ancient secret.

The third member of the group remained seated, a cigarette hanging from the corner of thin stretched lips that almost touched the long black sideburns descending from beneath his captain’s cap like mooring ropes. His angular face looked as though it had been carved by the harshness of many winds, and two long furrows sheltered wandering black eyes carrying a distant gaze suspended somewhere between a painful memory and an unfinished poem. His skin had the old bronze tone of someone who lives in sun and salt. A gold hoop earring adorned his left ear, giving him the exotic appearance of a smuggler from an adventure comic.

“So, Corto, still haven’t decided on nicotine patches?”

His eyes settled on me, as though trying to guess secrets I did not even know I possessed.

“I need something to entertain my lips,” he murmured in defence of the inert cigarette, without taking his eyes off me. I did not look away, meeting his gaze with a certain challenge, and his eyes seemed to brighten. A smile slowly stretched across his face and he added, directing the words towards Captain Jackdaw from the corner of his mouth: “That way, I stay out of trouble.”

“Closed mouth, golden mouth,” exclaimed Captain Nemo, projecting a loud laugh towards the ceiling that drew everybody’s attention.

“Shhh, discretion, companions,” whispered Captain Jackdaw. “Is anybody else here?”

“Aubrey arrived last night and is recovering from a hangover. Haddock is in the police station cells. He started pulling an old man’s beard and got taken away by the police, but he shouldn’t be long getting out. A few more may arrive before sunset,” reported Captain Corto.

At that point, I was strategically handed over to the care of Mr José Henrique Azevedo to visit the private Scrimshaw museum and its magnificent decorative pieces made from engraved and painted sperm-whale teeth depicting nautical themes.

“Let’s go over the details, then,” I still heard Captain Jackdaw say.

Later, when I returned from the brief guided tour, they were already studying the menu.

“A Peter Steak for me. I’ve got a hunger from the depths,” boomed Captain Nemo, letting out another loud laugh.

They all went for meat dishes, but I opted for a hummus salad. The food looked delicious, and perhaps before long there will be plant-based versions of the famous Azorean steak with pirate sauce.

My companions at the table were courteous in their charm, although it was noticeable that they had spent rather too long isolated on the high seas without visiting a safe harbour, if you know what I mean. As far as I was concerned, we could have stayed there talking for the rest of the afternoon, but Captain Jackdaw got us moving.

“I’ll see you men later.”, he said to the others.

We returned to our lodgings only to collect jackets for the breeze that was beginning to rise and to borrow a car that the owner of the house, a friend of the Captain’s, had parked at the back of the garage. It was a 1990s Fiat Panda, faded olive green in colour, smelling vaguely of old leather and stale tobacco.

“Take this one. It doesn’t stand out as much at night,” he said.

And I, who had never seen myself as a character in a spy novel, naïvely assumed he was referring to the dubious legality of an old banger that probably had not passed an inspection in years. I clearly lack the training required to detect the true meaning of certain remarks…

We began our circuit near the town of Horta with a visit to the Caldeira do Inferno. Afterwards we continued north to the Cabeço das Pedras Negras viewpoint, from where we could see Pico Island and the surrounding ocean. We stopped at the Church of Our Lady of Fátima, a simple building with a dark clock tower that looked more like a converted chimney. Just as I thought we were getting back into the car to return to town, the Captain informed the passengers – which was to say, me –  that we would be making a small detour.

“We’re just going to stop by Capelinhos to say hello to some other friends who have meanwhile arrived on the island,” he explained.

Perhaps it was the suggestive names of the places we had visited, or perhaps the steadily increasing hostility of the natural elements, but when the Captain informed me of the change of route, my perception of this simple car ride began to change.

As we approached the volcanic zone, the landscape transformed itself as though we were entering an episode of The Twilight Zone. The Captain parked beside the wall at the entrance to the car park.

“Invisible to anyone passing on the road,” I thought, my heart beginning to race.

Only then did I understand the house owner’s remark about the Panda’s conspicuousness in the dark. Ahead of us, silhouetted against the dark sky, stood the outline of the Capelinhos Lighthouse, or what remained of it, with the collapsed structure of the ruins resembling a submerged chapel emerging from a volcanic dream.

The Captain stepped out of the car without turning off the engine. The interior light came on, and for a moment I saw his face illuminated from above, revealing wrinkles that deepened like furrows in the sea. He walked away for a few moments, inspecting the surroundings, then returned to the car, leaned inside through the open door, and switched off the engine. He motioned for me to move into the driver’s seat and spoke in a voice lower than necessary.

“If anyone appears, signal with the lights.”

I stared at him, unsure whether this was a reasonable precaution or some sort of code for a secret mission. He noticed my hesitation and added.

“Three short flashes. Don’t get out for anything. This is just a meeting. A conversation between old sea dogs. It shouldn’t take long.”

And then, as though offering a final piece of advice before casting off.

“I’m trusting you.”

He closed the door gently and disappeared towards the lighthouse, his silhouette swallowed by a mantle of shadow.

I was left alone in the car. Or almost alone. The atmosphere around me seemed to contain an expectant presence, as though the island itself were waiting for something. The night was clear but moonless, and only a fine dusting of stars hung overhead. The sound of the sea came muffled from below, as though murmuring behind a thick invisible curtain in the darkness. Ahead of me, the path vanished almost immediately into the blackness. Behind me, there was only the wall.

“Conversation between old sea dogs, my foot…” I muttered.

I looked around inside the car and spotted a folded tartan blanket on the back seat.

“Must be for keeping watch on cold nights,” I snorted.

I didn’t dare pick up my phone, already infected by the paranoia of giving away my presence in the dark, and instead turned on the radio at low volume. It was still tuned to a local station playing a fado whose lyrics were impossible to make out. With my fingers resting on my knees and my eyes fixed on the darkness, I felt my heart beating to a new rhythm; not from fear, but from anticipation. The night was alive. Something was going to happen.

The minutes dragged by without anything happening. The fado ended and gave way to another song, then a third, while the minute hand advanced with the exasperating slowness peculiar to waiting at night. After a while, I began to doubt my suspicions. Perhaps I was simply sitting inside a borrowed car, staring at shadows and feeding ghosts. The cold began to seep through my jacket and I pulled the blanket from the back seat over my legs. More than twenty minutes must have passed since the Captain left.

I was trying to convince myself that this was just another strange night when I heard the sound. It was not particularly loud. It was neither metallic nor organic. It sounded like a muffled, prolonged moan coming from some indeterminate place; perhaps from the lighthouse itself, perhaps from somewhere even farther away.

Instinctively, I raised my head. The radio was now murmuring the same distant fado I had heard before, as though time had not passed at all. I switched the music off and held my breath, trying to listen into the emptiness, but there was nothing. I exhaled, attempting to recover my breath as silently as possible.

Suddenly, the sound returned and I interrupted my breathing, but whatever it was hid itself behind an echo. I felt my fingers dig into the car seat. He had said, “If anyone appears,” and this was not exactly anyone. It was a sound. A strange sound, certainly, but one without form, without a face, without any clearly defined category. Three short flashes with the headlights? What if it was some abandoned machine surrendering to rust? And what if…?

The sound returned, interrupting me. This time it was clearer and closer, as though something were… scraping. My imagination took off in a flash. It sounded like the fingernails of some creature, human or otherwise, moving slowly across a stone wall.

“Nightmare in Azores: Salty Air and Rusty Nails,” I said to myself, trying to shake off my fear with a joke that ridiculed the whole situation. I imagined myself fleeing from Freddy Krueger across an open field, wearing a semi-transparent white top plastered to my body, my nipples filling the foreground in a close-up shot, bouncing in slow motion so that every anatomical detail could be properly appreciated… And it occurred to me that this business of fear and sexual excitement appearing together in the films of certain directors goes beyond the phenomenon of exploitation cinema. Surely it is a revisiting, in an Amarcord-like fashion, of the terror of being caught masturbating in secret…

My train of thought was abruptly cut short by a sound that seemed closer still; it felt like fingernails scratching against a wall, accompanied by a deep moan. A shiver ran up my spine and it was then that I understood that the worst thing was not the sound itself. It was not knowing whether I should do something or nothing. The silent panic of indecision and ignorance.

I looked at the steering wheel. My hand hovered over the light switch, but I did not pull it. I waited. My heart was pounding and an inner voice was screaming nonsense. Then I slowly opened the car door. I had promised to stay in the car, but I did not want to raise a false alarm.

Outside, the night felt thicker. The air carried a mineral smell, as though I were inside a cave. Loose gravel crunched beneath the soles of my trainers on the paved ground. I took a few steps towards the lighthouse. Not many. Just enough to move away from the car and the wall that concealed my view, so that I could try to determine where the moaning was coming from.

The lighthouse remained motionless at the edge of the cliff, a shadow larger than all the others. Suddenly, it struck me that the lighthouse looked like an ancestral tooth left embedded by the bite of a titan in a world that had long since disappeared, and I felt an absurd panic growing inside me at the thought of being snatched away by a giant hungry for human flesh.

I was about to retreat towards the car, my breath caught in my throat, when I heard something amid the silence and the relentless pulse of my heartbeat in my ears. Something seemed to be moving in the distance, among the shadows on the volcano side, heading towards the lighthouse. It was not an abstract shape or a patch of mist. It was a solid human figure moving silently, seeming to listen more than walk. Time froze.

Suddenly, one of the small gravel stones cracked beneath my foot and shattered the silence. The figure stopped. I had given away my presence.

Adrenaline exploded through me. I ran towards the car, my legs slipping on the paving stones while my arms thrashed as though I could somehow swim through the thick air and move faster. The Panda now seemed irresponsibly far away.

When I reached it, I tripped over the outward-turned tyre, as though the car itself, in a mocking mood, had stuck out a foot and tripped me. I slid down the side of the vehicle, the door handle escaping my fingers. The next instant, without any idea how I had managed to get back on my feet so quickly, I yanked the door open and threw myself inside, banging my forehead lightly against the roof lining. I slammed the door shut with the same violence with which I had entered and locked it immediately. The sound of the lock clicking into place was an almost physical relief.

My hand flew to the headlight lever, but stopped. I was afraid of what I might see. I thought about calling the Captain, shoved my hands into my trouser pockets, and discovered that my phone was gone. I looked around frantically, unable to see it. I leaned over the gap between the front seats. Nothing. I bent over towards the passenger side and spotted a reflection on the floor mat. Stretching across, with my pocket snagging on the gear stick and nearly tearing my trousers, I finally managed to grab it.

That was when I heard the door handle move. I almost died. A scream rose into my throat and got stuck there. My eyes widened, my heart stopped and then resumed beating with enough force to break my ribs. The sound of the handle being forced on the driver’s side repeated itself twice more. Then it stopped. A moment later I heard a muffled voice and a light tap against the window.

“It’s me. Are you all right?”

It was Captain Jackdaw’s voice. I unlocked the door with a jerky movement, still in shock. He opened it and stood looking at me with a questioning expression.

“I saw a shadow… I heard a strange sound… I thought…”

He nodded, unsurprised.

“Yes, I heard it too,” he said, while I tried to catch my breath. “Don’t worry. There’s a small factory over there that works at night. An artisanal distillery that uses residual geothermal energy. They make a rare kind of sea-yam liqueur that they export to Japan. It’s believed to be an aphrodisiac.”

I could not answer. I simply stared at him, unable to tell whether he was telling the truth.

“The shadow was probably one of the workers heading home. Some of them take a shortcut through there,” he said, nodding towards the path leading to the lighthouse. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.”

With a smile, he gestured for us to switch places again. I chose not to get out of the car and instead slid awkwardly over the handbrake and gear stick, this time without becoming entangled. The Captain sat down, fastened his seatbelt, and started the engine. During the drive back to the house, he said very little. He simply drove with his usual absorbed and impenetrable expression.

“It’s possible that we may have to leave earlier than planned,” he said at last, shortly before parking. “But for now, get some rest. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

I did not even ask him anything about the meeting. Not that it would have done much good. He would probably have told me another tall tale, which is exactly what I think that story about the artisanal distillery was.

Of course, now, lying in a bed with soft sheets and pillows that smell of traditional blue soap, everything seems less frightening. But my heart is still unsettled and I cannot sleep. My mind keeps replaying the sound, and I cannot picture how a distillery could possibly make such a noise.

So I am writing to you. Because if something happens tomorrow, I want you to know that today I very nearly had a heart attack because of a shadow. And because even now, safe at last, I keep asking myself: What on earth happened at that meeting?

Excluindo as imagens criadas pelo autor deste blog, as imagens utilizadas neste post têm as seguintes lincenças:

Captain James T. ​Kirk: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/951726

Capitão Nemo: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Vladislav_Dvorzhetsky_as_Captain_Nemo.jpg

Corto Maltese: Ludo D. Rodriguez  https://ch.pinterest.com/pin/432978951655001549/