The men who died in that pursuit of the light were Sambachita Ánkene, who I think was the tallest man on the island, Ze Gutín Pêndê, Fidel Gañía, Pudul Jodán, Ze Fingui, Zancus’u Gueg’a, Ze Jandjía Teix, Menembofi Sugalía and that man who everyone knew would not be going to the Señor’s paradise, because he said such awful things about Jesucristo and the Virgen. And once again, Sabina’s premonitions had come true. For she had said she’d been met by many soaking men who smelled of saltwater, and she’d seen a face among the men that had been so familiar she hadn’t been able to keep quiet about who it was, and so she’d told everyone that something bad was going to happen and that it would involve that man who was not going to be granted salvation, that something bad was going to happen at sea, and that was why those men looked soaking wet and smelled of saltwater, at least to Sabina’s eyes and nose. But nobody had listened to her, maybe because nobody was willing to accept that yet another catastrophe was going to befall the island. And in fact that had a lot to do with why Sabina went around crying; she didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news, to have to tell people that more misfortune lay ahead. But there was no escaping it. When I got older and started to listen to adult conversations, the deads would make me very angry. Up until then, I’d understood that deads could help alives avoid catastrophes. But once these things came out of Sabina’s mouth, or out of the mouths of any of the other clairvoyants, the catastrophes happened without anybody being able to do anything about them. I said to myself: What’s the point of the deads? I thought they were meant to protect us? I found it hard to believe that they were so powerful they could bother Sabina by telling her a catastrophe was going to happen, but they couldn’t do anything to prevent the catastrophe from happening. I thought of all this because it was what I heard the old people say, and they knew the most about everything.
The whole island cried a lot, a tremendous amount. They were eight men with wives and children, families who’d start to have it bad now that the man of the house was gone. To have it bad even in the context of the hardship we had anyway. The whole island cried a lot and for several days. It was said, based on what the sole survivor said, once he could finally speak, that the light they saw on the horizon wasn’t real, that it had been a trick. That’s to say, a light that led them to their deaths. It led them far out to sea and, when they were so far out they could no longer see the island, the light disappeared, as if it had never shone in the first place. They realised they’d been tricked, but there was nothing they could do other than go on paddling; from then on, and until midday the next day, they paddled non-stop, searching for the lost island. That’s why I said I could say it a hundred times and still not come close to describing how much they paddled. They paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, and paddled, until they could paddle no more. And that’s when they saw land with mountains and trees. But it wasn’t real. There were trees and mountains that they could see right before their eyes, as if they could reach out and touch them with their hands, but when they rubbed their eyes to look closer, the mountains and trees were gone, and all they saw were the four points of the horizon again. They hadn’t eaten since leaving the village of San Xuan, and they’d taken nothing to drink with them either, for they had set off thinking that on that boat, from whatever nation it was, they’d be given food and drink, even that they’d smoke. But it didn’t turn out like that.