The Night of the Lanterns

On Saturday, Calablanca made itself beautiful without anyone asking.

From mid-afternoon the lighthouse jetty filled with people: families with coolers, grandmothers with folding chairs, kids from the island who had come over on the seven o’clock ferry wearing their own village’s festival T-shirts, just to be contrary. The baker sold out of coca before nine. The Town Hall had fixed the garlands, which now flickered a little, as if some of the storm had stayed inside them.

Alba finished the whale at ten past eight, up on the plank in the last of the light. She turned the tail around: up and down, like real whales. When she climbed down from the scaffolding, Tomás applauded from his chair and told her it looked worse, but more correct.

The Night of the Lanterns had its rules, though nobody had ever written them down. At ten the harbor lights went off. At five past ten the mayor said a few words nobody listened to. And at ten past ten the whole town lit its paper lanterns at once and set them on the water, and the tide carried them slowly toward the harbor mouth, hundreds of little lights trembling on the black sea, as if the bay had started to remember something.

That year the mayor spoke for longer than usual and with less enthusiasm. He said «the lighthouse», he said «the report», he said «we will study all the options», which everyone in Calablanca knew meant he didn’t have any left. They applauded him very politely.

Alba and Leo didn’t hear him. They were up on the lighthouse gallery, the green door locked from inside so nobody could come up, sitting on the floor with their backs against the glass and the notebook between them.

They had written in it that afternoon. The first new page in ten years. Leo had put the date, the way Tomás used to with the state of the sea, and underneath, in his slanted hand: «Sea calm. Visibility good. All in order».

Underneath that, Alba had drawn a whale with its tail on right.

At ten past ten, down below, the town lit the lanterns.

From the gallery it looked as if someone had poured an entire sky into the water. The lights left the jetty one by one and then in handfuls, drifting slowly toward the harbor mouth. Each one had a name written on it in marker, and although they couldn’t be read from up there, Alba knew that one of them carried her grandmother’s, because she had written it herself, and another carried Leo’s mother’s, because she had watched him write it.

"There’s something I have to tell you," said Leo.

"You’ve been saying that for four days."

"This is different." He looked at his hands. "I’ve been offered a job in Lisbon. A small studio, one of the good ones: they restore lighthouses, harbors, old buildings everyone wants to knock down. I have to give them an answer on Monday." He paused. "The train leaves tomorrow at eight."

Alba laughed without meaning it.

"Of course it leaves at eight."

"I’m not telling you so I can leave," said Leo. "I’m telling you because last time I didn’t tell you anything, and look how that turned out."

Below, someone started singing a habanera, out of tune. Others joined in. The lanterns kept drifting out to sea, hundreds, thousands, and the lighthouse, above them all, seemed to watch them with its dark eye, the way a grandfather watches the grandchildren from the window.

Alba thought about the kiosk and the oilcloth notebook. About Wednesday’s lemon ice creams. About Tomás and his transistor, Nuria and her horn, the whale with its tail on right. She thought about a city she didn’t know, with yellow trams and steep streets, which she had imagined so many times at nineteen that it almost felt like a memory. She thought about her grandmother, who had asked her to listen to the lighthouse.

The lighthouse, as always, said nothing. But that night, for the first time, Alba had the feeling it was listening to her.