Albatross Tavern

In 1723, Lisbon boy Thomas Vieira was twelve years old. When his father fell off the scaffolding, he found a way for himself to survive: boarding a merchant ship called Santa Teresa. There is a silent old sailor on the ship. No one knows where he comes from or what his original name is. When he was on duty at night, he always leaned on the mast and looked at the sea. Everyone called him Old York. The ship was stuck in the windless zone of the equator for the seventh day. The fresh water was running out and the compass failed. Old York rolled over the side of the boat and stepped barefoot into the glowing water. He said: There is a shore there. There was no looking back. Thomas found a pressed dried coral flower under his pillow. Three years later, he bought the closed tavern on the pier and put up a sign with his own hands: an albatross and a coral flower. Every month on the full moon, I go to the dock and sit there for seventy-two years. He sewed the button engraved with coral flowers into the inner pocket of his shirt, and sat on it from boy to boy. Waiting for someone who doesn't know if he will come back, waiting for a word that he doesn't know if he can wait. In the late autumn of 1773, eighty-three-year-old Thomas received a letter by the tide. The wax seal is a flattened coral flower. There are only seven words in the letter: "You waited.—So I'm back." The tide rises three hundred times, and it comes back as soon as it goes.