Still Life In Shadow
or: The Order of the Universe, In a Smile
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She presented herself as a simple woman, and it had been said of her -- for as long as anyone on the island could remember -- that she had been unassuming, almost plain -- even when she was young. Before she left for Zurich.
But that was so long ago.
She had always been considered brilliant, even before the first day she first walked to the island school. She was different, and though not everyone understood her peculiar gift, that doesn't really account for what happened in our time together.
Maria Louisa D'Alessandro was her name. She was Portuguese, but after finishing medical studies in Switzerland she had unaccountably returned to her family's home near Horta, on the island of Faial in the Azores, and she had been practicing medicine there for almost thirty years -- when I stumbled along and became a part of her story.
She was a surgeon at the only hospital on the island, and she ran an inter-island clinic for off-islanders as well, and she had come to be regarded as something of a saint by almost every inhabitant of the island chain. She was an oddity within the medical profession, too. She had trained in cardiovascular surgery but had simply picked up and left that high-pressure world -- the bustle of Zurich, the certain promise of a celebrated career -- and returned to this last outpost of the Portuguese empire, to this end of the line. Who can say, really, why. Did she return to get as far away from that fast-paced world as she could?
Again, no one knew her reasons, not really. Those who spend their lives worrying about such things often said a man was involved, but her return wasn't really an open mystery anymore. The who and the why of it had, over the years, simply faded away. Gone too were the days, just after her return, when the young physician was looked on with lingering suspicion; she was brilliant, and she belonged to them -- and so what if she returned? The men who once tried to win her heart stopped trying, left to make homes with other women, or they had gone to the sea, fishing perhaps -- and on to their final rests.
Yes, that early part of her life was now little more than a memory; mysteries of uncertain unions, too, were now all of that untested past. Maria Louisa D'Alessandro watched all these mysteries play out in remotest seclusion, ignored the gossip as she watched the gossipers come and go, and she did so with kindness in her heart for everyone, for she possessed, in word and deed, a kind soul.
A Saint, if you really must know the truth of it.
Maria lived in her family's house, a small whitewashed stone cottage on the south side of the island, in a little village outside of Horta known as Pasteleiro. Her house, like many others on the island, sat just back from a cliff that looked out over the Atlantic Ocean, yet it was in her south-facing garden - a world apart full of gardenia and azalea blossoms most of the year - that Maria found what real peace there was to be had in this life. When not seeing patients in her clinic, or at the hospital in it's one operating room, Maria would inevitably be found on her knees, in her garden, slowly, perhaps even lovingly -- working on the petals of her God's creation.
Almost without exception, Maria would each day make dinner for herself at home. When the weather was stormy she certainly find her inside by the house's old, stone fireplace. Max would be there with her -- right by her side. Max, her soulfully faithful and very old Bernese Mountain Dog, a massive black mound of fur -- with copper and white accents on his face and belly. They had, on their many stormy evenings together, looked out over mad, storm-tossed seas and wondered what furies danced in the heavens to create such majestic anarchy. Max would sit closely by her side on those nights, warm her feet and watch her with all the love and affection of any loving husband, and he was happy in this world, happy with his life, and happy with Maria -- in the one and only way dogs know and understand our world.
In the normal, sun-drenched evenings of her island home, Maria would sit in her garden as the sun set and have a light salad, and perhaps some cheese with her wine, and invariably, no matter what the weather, she would sit in the afterglow of another day and read the works of Donne and Goethe and Yeats. She often read aloud to Max, and he would sit by the wall of her garden with the last of the day's sun on his neck, and he looked at her with what surely must have been curiosity on his face, because he alone -- of the all souls in this world -- truly listened to her.
Some might read these words and think about such an existence, find the routines of her life mundane, perhaps even boring. Yet there are few people who know the meaning of peace, or the myriad ways the souls of men can be ripped asunder, not in the way Maria Louisa D'Alessandro understood these things. Maria was an expert at recognizing a soul's dis-ease, you see, because hers had been dead for such a very long time.
At least she told me that was the truth of the matter, long after events relayed in this little tale passed into memory.
I assumed over time that she thought of her place in life, when she bothered to think of herself at all, as a vast emptiness, devoid of human love. She relied on Max the way the blind rely on their dogs; he helped her avoid the worst consequences of her own peculiar sightlessness. But was Max was old when I met him, already concerned more about the next life than he knew, and Maria Louisa D'Alessandro had yet to grasp what his failing eyesight really meant.
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I first heard David Latham's voice over the radio, and he sounded very stressed-out, very...I don't know...maybe weak is the right word?
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, let me take you back, back to a blustery May day a few months before we met, to an afternoon a few years ago, when I was en-route from the United States to the Mediterranean -- via Bermuda and the Azores -- and on an old friend's new sailboat. I had done some sailing before but this was my first long ocean passage, yet I had been -- and let's keep this simple -- hesitant to make the trip. But Harry Stinson, my oldest and most loyal friend, had begged and pleaded with me to make the trip with him, and in the end he simply hammered away at my resolve long enough -- until I gave up and said something noxious and brave like: 'Okay, let's do it!' Enthusiasm? I wouldn't go that far...
Harry was bringing along his wife and twenty four year old daughter, and he said they wanted someone with a strong back for the Atlantic crossing, which they rightly considered the hardest part of their journey to Italy. My wife, bless her black little heart, simply refused to join us, as she refused to do anything not her own choosing -- and that might crack a fingernail. Yes, my wife and I were at odds with one another, two fighters in the ring sitting warily in their respective corners, tending to our cuts bruises while friends huddled in front of us, urging us back into the ring for one more round. The fact she had turned into a bi-polar shrew had nothing to do with any of this, in fact, if anything, she had with age corrupted within the cask. She was vinegar now, bitter, sour, and only good on salads.
We, the Stinson's and myself, departed Mystic, Connecticut and sprinted for Bermuda, arriving a leisurely five days later. I will always remember the first 48 hours of this first leg with uncertain fondness in my heart, the number of hours we spent on our knees -- hurling the contents of our stomachs into the sea. When I think of those first few days at sea I could write volumes on the subtle forms human misery can take, yet when I think about the nausea that hit that first night at sea, and the avalanche that followed, words fail me. Despair comes to mind, but inadequately fails to convey the totality, the
Gesamtkunstwerk
that is ocean sailing at night, in a gale.
Suffice to say, as Bermuda appeared behind wind-driven veils of rain and her rocky reefs hove into view, I swore I'd jump ship and never set foot on another sailboat again -- for as long as I lived.
That is, until I found out what a same-day purchase, one-way ticket back to Boston would cost.
I am at heart a frugal sort -- my wife would say downright cheap -- but what does she know? In the end, that's why I -- allegedly -- remained onboard and agreed to finish the trip -- at least as far as Gibraltar. The other reason I refuse to talk about publicly, but if it must be known, it was because I really enjoyed myself the last four days of that trip in so many ways I can't even begin to relate them all to you. I had never known such peace, or had such fun. Let's just say that Harry's daughter had a lot to do with my decision to remain on board.
Could we just leave it at that?
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We left Bermuda in the middle of May and began the 2100 mile slog across the Atlantic to the Azores. Ten days out and as the sun was rising, we saw a sailboat a few miles ahead of ours; not a few minutes later the young man on this boat hailed us on his VHF radio.
"Hello, sailing vessel near three-eight-zero-three North by three-eight-five-eight West, this is the Sailing Vessel Bolero, over. Sailing vessel near three-eight-zero-three North by three-eight-five-eight West, this is the Bolero, over."
"Bolero, this is the
