The Light We Left Burning

Eastern Chiloé, Chile, 1897

On the ninth evening I cleaned the lamp before my brother Gabriel had taken his boots off.

He sat beside the stove with his wet socks hanging from one hand. I had put a pot of food there for him. When he did not reach for it, I moved it closer.

“Did you go beyond the point?”

“We went as far as the other beach.”

“And the rocks below it?”

“Ana,” he said.

I rubbed the chimney with the inside of my sleeve. There was a mark near the top that would not come away. Esteban always turned the wick too high, although he complained about the price of kerosene when I bought it. In the mornings I had made him clean the glass himself.

Gabriel put his socks over the stove rail and pulled at the wet cuffs of his sweater. I had knitted it from wool bought in Castro, leaving extra length in the sleeves for rowing.

“They have to go back to work tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“It’s been nine days.”

“I know how many.”

A neighbor had offered to begin the nine nights of prayers for the dead. I had told her she could pray for him to come home. She had not asked again.

Gabriel lowered his eyes to the pot. His hands were swollen from the cold, the knuckles cracked. I wanted to tell him to eat before it cooled. Instead I kept rubbing the glass, ashamed of making him answer for the men who would not search tomorrow.

Our house stood above a narrow beach, with the path coming down through the trees on the northern side. From the window I could see our little chalupa drawn up on the stones and the pale stump at the end of the landing. Beyond it, the inlet opened between two wooded points. The other houses were farther around the shore, out of sight of ours.

I set the lamp in the window. I had lit it every evening since Esteban failed to come home. He had used it to find the landing when he came home after dark. Before we were married he had told me he knew every tree along that shore. Later, when I forgot the lamp, he said all the trees looked alike.

Gabriel ate standing by the stove. Afterward he put his dry socks on and asked whether I wanted him to stay.

“Take the bed,” I said. “I won’t sleep yet.”

He was carrying his boots into the other room when the music began.

At first I took it for someone singing on the path. Then I heard a fiddle, thin but distinct, with feet beating beneath it. The sound came across the water. Gabriel returned to the window and stood beside me without putting his boots down.

A patch of mist lay between the points. Lights moved behind it, too close together to be separate boats. As they came through, I saw a long row of windows and another line of lamps above them. There were people between the lamps. One lifted an arm, and light shone beneath the elbow.

“What is that doing here?” Gabriel said.

The vessel was coming past the southern point. Its bow had already crossed the place where Esteban’s boat had once scraped bottom on a falling tide. This one was large enough to carry our house. I waited for it to strike, for the music to stop and the people to turn toward the shore.

It kept coming.

I put my hand on Gabriel’s sleeve. I knew the stories. So did he. When I was small, men had sometimes come home early and left their boats above the highest water, and the women had not asked why until we children were in bed.

El Caleuche.

I did not say it. My brother was drawing me back from the window when someone called my name.

Not loudly enough for the distance. I heard him as plainly as if he had reached the bottom of our path.

“Ana. Put out the light.”

I pulled free of Gabriel. The lamp struck the frame when I lifted it. I held it against the glass, trying to see the place the voice had come from.

“Esteban?” I called.

Several figures turned toward the shore. Near the stern, one remained leaning out over the rail.

“Put it out. They can see you.”

I lowered the wick until the flame disappeared. The glass ticked in my hands.

For a moment I could see nothing beyond the shape the lamp had left in my eyes. Gabriel took it from me. When the windows of the ship came back, I found the figure near the stern again. From the house I could not tell whether he was still looking toward us.

Gabriel said, “That was him.”

I hadn’t needed my brother to say it. I was already moving when he did.

* * *

Gabriel caught me at the back door.

“Wait. I’ll get the others.”

The nearest house was beyond the northern point, a walk through the trees and down another path. The ship was moving across the mouth of our inlet. Before the others reached the beach it would be gone.

“Get your boots.”

“You heard what he said.”

“He told me to put the light out.”

Gabriel looked past me toward the window. The music had grown louder. Through it came laughter, then the scraping of something heavy across boards.

“I won’t go aboard,” I said. “Help me get him down.”

My brother put his boots on without tying them. I took Esteban’s knife from the shelf, where I had left it after using it to cut bread that morning. He had owned two. The other had gone with him. This one had a wooden handle worn smooth along one side by his thumb.

Outside, the stones shifted under our feet. The boat was still wet from Gabriel’s search, with the oars laid along the seats. He checked the plug while I untied the bow line from the stump and coiled it in the boat. The boat hook was beneath the middle seat. I pulled it clear.

We pushed down the beach together. Cold water entered one of my shoes before the boat floated. Gabriel held it while I climbed over the side, then shoved us off and came in over the stern.

“Sit down.”

I had been standing, looking past him toward the lights. I sat on the middle seat and put the oars in their locks. My hands knew the spacing, but I missed the water with the first stroke.

“Slowly,” he said.

I tried again. The oars took hold of the water. Gabriel moved to the bow and sat facing the ship, the boat hook across his knees. He told me when to turn.

There was little wind inside the inlet. The mist had thinned enough for me to keep the pale stump in sight as it drew away. I kept my eyes on the stump; looking over my shoulder made my hands lose their rhythm.

“Is he there?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Near the back. Keep pulling.”

The music filled the inlet. I could hear someone tapping a glass, patiently, as if waiting to be heard. A woman laughed before the tapping stopped. I tried to separate Esteban’s voice from the others and could not.

“Enough,” Gabriel said.

I let the oar blades drag in the water to slow us and looked over my shoulder. The ship’s dark side rose behind him. Here near the stern, its rail was just above our heads when we stood, with light spilling over it from the deck. He put the blunt end of the boat hook against the planking and kept us from striking it.

I laid the oars inside and turned.

Esteban was leaning over the rail.

He had lost his cap. His hair lay flat on one side, as it did when he fell asleep before it had dried. The coat was his, with the piece of darker wool I had sewn over the cuff. He was looking at our boat, at Gabriel, then at me, and his mouth kept opening without a word coming out.

I rose halfway from the seat.

“Give me your hand.”

He shook his head and glanced behind him.

“Esteban.”

“Go back,” he said. “Before they take hold of you.”

I reached up. His hand hung beyond the rail, almost within mine. He drew it back against the wood.

Behind him a man in a white shirt was talking to someone I could not see. He held a cup at his waist. His other arm reached around Esteban’s back, the white sleeve visible beneath the lamps.

“What happened to your boat?”

Esteban looked toward the man. I had never seen him look at anyone that way. He used to argue with men twice his size over the price of a repair. Now he waited until the man turned his head before speaking.

“Get away from the side.”

Gabriel pushed with the pole. Our boat moved out a little. Esteban reached after us, then tried to pull his hand back.

I caught it before he could.

His fingers closed on mine so hard that I made a sound. He loosened them at once, and I knew that too: the quick adjustment, the care that came after he had forgotten his own strength.

I put my other hand around his wrist.

“We’ve been looking everywhere.”

His thumb moved against the base of mine. The cracked nail was still there. He had split it opening a shellfish basket the week before he went missing, and had kept catching it in the bedclothes.

“Ana.”

“Come down. Gabriel’s here.”

“I can see him.”

My husband looked at me, and his face began to work. He pressed his lips together, but they would not stay still.

* * *

Gabriel brought the boat alongside again. I braced my hip against the middle seat as Esteban bent farther over the rail. I felt his weight through our joined hands.

“Turn sideways,” I told him. “Get a leg over.”

He tried to lift himself. His coat rose at the back.

For a moment I thought someone behind him was pressing a boot against his shoulder. Then the coat slipped farther and I saw that the boot was his own. His right leg was folded backward, the heel drawn up below his shoulder blade. A strip of bare ankle showed where his pants had pulled away.

I stopped pulling.

Esteban shut his eyes. His grip tightened, and I made myself look at his face instead.

“Who did that?”

He shook his head once. There was a wet line beneath his nose.

“We’ll lift you.”

The man in the white shirt set down his cup. He had been holding Esteban by the back of the coat. Now he reached beneath it and took hold of his belt. Another man came to the rail on Esteban’s other side. Neither spoke to us.

Gabriel laid down the boat hook and reached for Esteban’s elbow. The gunwale dipped, and I braced my free hand on our seat.

“On three,” Gabriel said.

We pulled before he finished counting.

Esteban cried out. His chest slid over the rail, and I thought we had him. I leaned back, taking his weight.

The men drew him back.

One man held his belt while the other caught his collar. His shoulder struck the rail.

“Let him go.”

The man in the white shirt glanced at me. His face was broad and clean-shaven, with a fold beside the mouth. I had expected something that would explain what he was doing. He looked down at our hands and moved his grip higher on Esteban’s belt.

From inside the ship came a burst of clapping. The fiddle began the tune again.

Gabriel let go of Esteban’s elbow and struck at the man’s arm. The man caught my brother’s sweater behind the shoulder. Gabriel ducked, trying to pull out of it, but the wool tightened across his throat. His boots left the bottom of our boat.

I caught Gabriel’s belt.

The boat lurched against the hull. Water ran around my ankles. Gabriel pushed against the rail while the man gathered another handful of sweater behind his neck.

Gabriel made a thick choking sound.

The rail was coming down.

I thought the boat had risen on a swell, but it stayed there. The long window that had been level with my knees slipped beneath the water. Light spread around our feet. The sea entered the window in a smooth sheet, and the people beyond it continued moving.

“Esteban.”

He was looking at Gabriel.

“Ana, take him,” Esteban said.

“I have him.”

“With both hands,” he said.

I shook my head. I still held my husband. Gabriel’s belt was slipping out of my other hand.

Esteban used his free hand to lift my thumb.

I closed it again.

“No!”

He caught it at the joint. There was nothing gentle in it now. He bent it back until my grip opened, then pushed my hand away.

Gabriel’s belt slipped, and I caught my brother with both hands.

His boots struck the outside of our boat. The man aboard was drawing him over the descending rail. Gabriel’s face had gone dark, his mouth open against the wool bunched beneath his chin.

The knife was in my coat pocket. Keeping one hand in Gabriel’s belt, I took it out. My thumb would not press the blade open where Esteban had bent it. I caught the blade against the seat and pulled the handle.

“Keep still,” I told Gabriel.

He could not. His heels beat against the boat.

I slid the blade beneath the stretched front of his sweater, below his throat, and cut down through the ribbing. I dropped the knife into the boat and pulled the cut edges apart.

Gabriel twisted out of one sleeve, scraping his bare shoulder against the rail. The man still held the gathered back. I took my brother under the arm and pulled.

He came out of the other sleeve and fell across the gunwale.

The boat rolled toward him. I threw my weight back, dragging him over the side, and we struck the seat together. Gabriel lay across me, coughing, while the hand that had held his sweater reached toward us again.

Gabriel got to his knees and found the boat hook. He set its blunt end against the hull.

“Move back,” he rasped.

I crawled toward the opposite side. He pushed. The pole bowed, then our boat slid away from the ship.

Esteban was still at the rail.

I called to him. He had lowered his arms onto the wood, and the men stood behind him with their hands on his shoulders. Water reached the deck and spread around them. One of the men stepped aside to let a woman pass. She was carrying a plate.

I reached for an oar. My fingers would not close properly around the handle. I used both hands and shoved the blade into the water on the side nearest the ship.

We turned. Gabriel took the other oar and pulled while kneeling. The boat went sideways, but it moved, and dark water opened between us and the lamps.

Esteban lifted his chin.

The water was at his chest. I could see the effort in his neck as he raised his face toward us. The men behind him had stopped holding his shoulders. He remained where they had left him, his hands resting on the rail.

I said his name, but there was too much music. I shouted it and saw his eyes find me.

He took a breath before the water reached his mouth.

I waited for him to come up.

The lights continued downward. Beneath the surface his face remained turned toward our boat, pale among the wavering shapes of the lamps. He held his lips together. Small bubbles caught in his hair and came free.

Gabriel pulled at my shoulder.

“Ana. Row.”

I took another stroke. The oar passed through the light above my husband’s face.

* * *

We found the landing by the pale stump. Gabriel went over the side before the boat had stopped and fell to his knees in the water. I helped him stand. His shirt was torn at the shoulder, and he could not straighten his neck.

We pulled the boat above the water and left it with the oars inside. I forgot the bow line. Halfway up the path Gabriel went back to tie it, and I stood among the trees until he returned.

In the house I put a blanket around him. He held its edges together with both hands. Neither of us went near the window.

The lamp stood on the table where Gabriel had put it. I carried it into the kitchen and set it on the floor beside the kerosene tin. There was enough left in it to burn until morning. I put the matches beside it and left them there.

I sat beside my brother and listened to him breathe. Each time he drew air, I saw Esteban’s face beneath the water, his lips still closed when the light failed.

Esteban had not let his breath out.