I am eating a chunk of a membrillo made of quince with a piece of sheep’s cheese for breakfast. It is not early. Most guests of the pousada have left …but I sit over my breakfast with a last cup of coffee. I have slept late. There is a reason I have slept late. I will arise in the middle of the night before to see the pattern of the stars. My eyes will jump nimbly from one to another as their pinpoints of light lead me far out to sea.

I have arisen in the middle of the night to see the pattern of the stars, because my mother has written in the flyleaf page of the book that Sagres has a famous history of navigation …a place of fearful sailors who have never sailed beyond the Green Sea of Darkness. In the middle of the night, I am navigating with the stars …jumping one to another. It is fearful and beautiful to jump from one star to another. The stars are beautiful. The leap from one to another is fearful, because I don’t really know if I will falter. I don’t know what I will find in the empty spaces between the stars that seem like  stepping-stone paths to light …but are really distant, burning bodies that do not give warmth in the middle of the night.

I trail over the countryside and into the small town …walk through the square and find a narrow alley in the direction of the fortaleza. It is a low gray structure rising out of rock the same color. It has been weathered by the strong winds that blow across the salty sea.

My mother has told me that the Cabo de São Vicente is the place of the School of Navigation built by Prince Henry, the Infante do Sagres. It is the Age of Discovery and no sailor has returned from the terror of the Cape of Bojador along the coast of West Africa. They have all fallen off the edge of the earth into the Green Sea of Darkness. Their ships have burned. They have been broken and the sailors consumed by monsters. I wander in the deserted fortaleza. It is a broad, plain space. I sit in the church. There are plain, sunny, stained glass windows and  São Vicente and  São Francisco statues covered in scratched plexiglass. I pray prayers for my mother. She is out on that cape somewhere with my father. I fear for her heart. I fear for her life. I fear that she will fall off of the edge of the earth into the Green Sea of Darkness.

I wander the Cape. There are fishermen on the cliffs. They throw their long lines from long poles over the cliff. They ride bicycles to find their fishing place and eat their lunches. They yell back and forth at each other. Their voices are carried in the wind. They smile and laugh. It is a sunny day. There are clouds and a blue sky.

I look for the Infante do Sagres. Where are the cartographers …the geographers …the sailors …the shipwrights? Where are these men living on this harsh land? Where are these fearful men who will sail the seas navigating by the stars going into the unknown? I look. I find only a record of memories written down on tablets here and there. The record of memories says that the Infante do Sagres will not go on any of the voyages himself, but he will give the sailors hope. He will dream for those who go ahead of him until they chart the oceans far from the storms of Cape Bojador all the way to the Cape of Las Palmas. That is what this record of memories says.

It is my mother who will tell me a different story. She will tell of Prince Henry’s burning desire to win souls for Jesus and to conquer those in the faith of Islam. She will weave the Infante’s dreams of spices and the mythical land of John Prester into the tale. My mother will tell me that there were no spices, just boatloads of slaves coming back chained below the decks …filthy, starving and thirsty crying out to god’s that will not answer. They will be told that only Jesus and the Virgin will answer instead. They will cry out in desperation, but these new gods will only return silence.

My mother will know that there are often two stories. She will only have to look at marriage to my father to know that. She will tell me this tale as she sets the table with the tablecloths bought from the gypsies …the ones that cannot forget they are sails …sails that she wishes, perhaps, could take her away. She will tell this tale from far into the past that has unimaginable dissimilarities, but that has certain similarities on the subject of freedom. She will know that these new god’s will only return silence to the slaves in the boats, but she will still pray to Jesus for a change in my father.

Did an answer ever come back in that silence? Was there no answer at all?

I watch my mother and my father walking hand in hand in the distance.  My mother walks as if she were a flower floating on the wind… a volunteer seed dropped by birds in the middle of a strange land arising from the dry earth… purple and joyful.  My mother and father are joking and laughing as if they are young lovers. My father puts his arm around my mother as they walk. My father promises my mother things that he will deliver …but there will be silent requirements that will grow to deafening impossibilities. My mother loves my father’s promises. My mother thinks on his promises as if they were love. She does not think about the impossible burden of the things attached. She does not think about how this impossible burden will break her sapping strength as she becomes an old woman. She does not think of the pit in her that will never be filled with peace. But, today, my mother is the young girl. Today my mother and father are lovers.

They sit down on a rock to eat their lunch. There are tiny, sweet laranjas and apples, pasteles de nata, slices of cheese, a length of chouriço and cured olives. My mother has forgotten the sandwiches on the seat in the car. The winds of my father change. A storm of darkness and anger blows up from the ugliness in him onto his face. There are belittling accusations. There is the violence in his words. I see my mother and father leaving the cape. They are not holding hands. They are not laughing. My father does not put his arm around my mother. My mother is walking with her head down. Sometimes she reaches down and picks a flower from the stony ground. It is always the same …

…just the same.