Protected: There Is No Privacy on Open Water

Edgard Telles Ribeiro’s writing is always tinged with what can only be termed mystery. In his collection As If By Magic, the reader will enjoy the twists and turns of plot, the unexpected discoveries made by characters, and the deliberately spare prose style that keeps events veiled until just the right moment. 

“Albatross” is the perfect example of these literary talents. The story’s title invites us to recall the legends surrounding albatrosses. Every early seafaring culture valued them as omens, usually of a safe voyage, or as spirit guides. To kill an albatross was to bring down divine wrath. Coleridge’s famous Rime of the Ancient Mariner is of course the prime literary albatross tale in English, giving rise to the albatross as a symbol of a persistent, inescapable burden. (Reader, take note.) In Ribeiro’s story, the characters are not given names, adding yet more weight to the title. 

“Albatross” is set on the coast of Brazil, where many small port towns enjoy, and earn their living from, the sea. Ribeiro’s narrator learns he has inherited a small, uninhabited island from a barely remembered deceased uncle. He sets out to visit his newly acquired domain, where he intends to camp. We learn that he is a writer, aged fifty, and divorced. He brings along a manuscript of his work, hoping to write while enjoying his unexpected good fortune. He is pleased, although he tells us, “I recalled my childhood, when the greatest joys were always preceded by a certain uneasiness.”

During a sunset swim on the very first evening, he overhears Baroque music coming from the darkness. It is then that the deluxe sailboat, the Albatross, makes its appearance. From the shore, he has a very brief, shouted conversation with the couple on the sailboat, who seem astonished to see him. Oddly, the narrator feels like the intruder, the interaction pulling his solitary adventure out of kilter. Gradually, we are drawn into a mood of unease and unreality—or is it heightened reality?

Ribeiro is the master of the clever reveal, leading the reader expertly through anguished psychological pathways, until the shocking end of the story.

– Margaret A. Neves
Translator of “Albatross”