In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The old woman scurried across the sand, back and forth. Every now and then she would stop, bend down, and poke a stick at something in the sand. Occasionally, she picked up something of interest. Some children passed by on the road and shouted at her. They were too far away for her to make out what was said, but she had heard it all before: “What are you looking for, Mad Marisa? Treasure? Did you lose something? Your husband, maybe?” They repeated the words of their parents. She stood and waved. They laughed and she laughed back at them. She went back to her searching. Finally she stopped and stared at something white jutting out of the sand. She circled it cautiously, as though it might suddenly spring at her. It was a bone. “Well, well, what have we here,” she said. “Some ancient sailor, perhaps?” Looking around quickly, to make sure no one was watching, she bent down and picked it up. She turned the bone over, carefully examining both ends and along its length. The bone was large; most likely it had been a forearm, she thought. She wrapped it in her shawl and carried it toward home, holding it in the crook of her arm, like a baby. Everybody knew her as Marisa, the mad woman of Praia Negra, though Marisa wasn’t her real name. They had called her that for so long that nobody could remember what her true name was, or even that the one they called her wasn’t hers. Some said she had always been mad, but most people believed it was losing her husband that drove her mad. Twenty years had passed since Eduardo had disappeared. Most believed he had left the islands and sailed off to Portugal or Madeira after a woman. There were rumors he had been seen years later. Eduardo’s Promise Darrell Kastin 124 Still, Marisa didn’t believe any of them. “His boat was wrecked in a terrible storm. Everyone knows he was the best fisherman on the island. He always went farther than the others, and he brought back more fish than anyone else.” Year after year she would tell people: “He’ll come back. He said so. He made a promise. You’ll see.” A few neighbors kept an eye on her, bringing her home if she got caught in the rain or lost. They left food for her and brought blankets and other household supplies. They had tried to talk her into leaving numerous times, to go to the mainland where she had family. But she refused. “This is where I belong,” she said. “This is my home.” Every day Marisa left her small stone house and walked up and down the beach. She gazed out over the sea, studying the distance as though awaiting a sign, like the old whale watcher who sat in the lookout up the hill, peering constantly through the slits that served as a window with his pair of binoculars, ready to shoot off the flare announcing that he had sighted a whale in the distance. She would return and walk in the other direction, combing the wet sand and the rocks for the odds and ends that occasionally washed ashore. She never walked along the roads except when she went into the village for something. She didn’t walk along the pastures or in the parks either, as though only the narrow strip of sand beckoned her: the thin border between the richly bountiful land of life, and that strange, living mystery out there, rippling with shadows, resounding with death. After reaching her house, Marisa quickly rinsed the bone with water from the well. It was bleached white and spotless, but she scrubbed it nonetheless. “Who are you?” she said, stepping inside and setting it down on the table. “Were you a sailor?” She lit a fire in the stove. “Or a fisherman who was washed overboard? Maybe someone killed you, pushed you off a ship. Or did you kill yourself by jumping into the sea?” She brought out candles and set them on the table near the bone. “Such great luck to have found you,” she said. “Not just an ordinary find today. And how long have you been dead? Ah, who is to know such things? Maybe you are just some old pirate whose bones have finally washed up.” She didn’t know where to put it. The bone was something special and didn...

Share