It is not a dream of storm weather that follows Bolivar into the town, but words overheard last night, perhaps in Gabriela’s bar, that give him the feeling now of a dream. He thinks, it might have been the chatter of Alexis or José Luis – who knows, they are such troublemakers. And yet this feeling of dream persists. It is the feeling of a world once known, but forgotten, asking from over the sea.
His sandalled feet follow the road over the crumbling bridge. Past the empty beachside cabanas. Past where the nesting sea turtles scallop the beach. His eyes seeking out beyond the lagoon but his sight is drawn towards the shore. An oilcan lies washed up and surrounding it a glittering of dead popocha fish. He fixes his baseball cap and walks onto the beach.
He thinks, it is just a dozen or so, but still. Even the beggars won’t touch them. There is a sickness in the rivers that no one will ever explain.
He studies the indigo dawn for trouble. He studies the clouds and the wind. That the ocean has a hue is a lie among men. He cannot remember who said this. For the sea contains all colour and in that way everything is within it. This might be true, who knows what you hear.
* * *
The plastic white seats at Rosa’s café lean like drunk sleepers to their tables. He slaps at a net full of beach balls hanging from the palapa roof. Damnit, he says. Angel is not waiting. He kicks a seat past the beach screen and the back of the seat cracks when he sits. His hands rest on the spill of his gut as he studies them. Such hands are too big, perhaps, and he has often thought this. A forearm for a wrist. A thigh for an arm. Shoulders for a neck. But what else do you expect for a fisherman?
He turns his head and shouts, Rosa!
From here he can see the panga boat he thinks of as his own, alone and high up on the beach. The white hull with Camille painted in turquoise. Angel is not there either. He can see the ghosts of two men, his earlier self and Angel last night and how they sat in that panga, moon-drawn effigies of fishermen drinking beer amidst the bodiless shouting and the gaunt light thrown by the bars on the strip.
He calls again for Rosa, can hear that crazy Alexander at his singing, the old man’s voice a glass-bright tremolo. He leans until he can see him on a cooling box of some undetermined long-ago colour. The flashing of nails as he repairs sea-worn nets. Each day Bolivar tries not to listen, yet still he listens, for such songs evoke in him feelings he cannot explain. Sometimes a feeling like guilt. Sometimes a feeling of being alive long ago, as though he had lived the life of another, and what are you supposed to make of such a thing?
Loose sand rolls across the matting. He puts a finger to his nose and gouts snot. Rosa!
It is the Virgin of Guadalupe on her high shelf who watches Bolivar as though he were an apparition gliding through the hanging beads of the door. There is Rosa asleep on a hammock, she is always asleep. He reaches for the remote control and turns the TV on to a game from the night before.
Rosa! he says. Have you seen Angel?
The woman stirs with a vexed sound. With pendulous feet she swings out of the hammock and stands in the half-light tying up her hair. Just her eyes he can see as if they can draw what there is of the light towards them. He blinks at her twice and an old part of his mind thinks of her as some witch in the dark until she rolls up the screen and her body finds its expression. His eyes following the light as it falls upon her loose-shirted abdomen, upon her glossed hands and thighs. His eyes prizing her the way a man prizes a woman.
Has Angel not turned up yet, Rosa?
That box of limes, Bolivar. Did you bring them? I asked you last night.
He is either here or not here. I have just a few limes to take with me on the boat.
How Rosa seems to sigh in everything she does. Her body is sadness bending to the fridge. She pulls from it two beer bottles, the movement of hinging upward is a weariness that does not belong to a woman as young as this. She uncaps both bottles without looking, rests a stare upon some faraway thought out past the lagoon.
Bolivar holds her with a look as he takes a long drink. A goal sounds on the TV and he leans for a moment out the beaded door, returns wiping his mouth with his wrist.
You will not believe it, he says. Remember that great fish kill last year? I just saw some popocha washed up dead on the beach.
Rosa studies him a moment.
She says, some man came round here looking for you last night.
What man?
I don’t know. He said he was going to cut off your ears.
It is him.
Who?
I have done something stupid. But I will fix it quick.
He watches the way her right eye pinches when she drinks. Watches this cool brick room where she lives. A hammock and two palm-wood chairs and a humming box refrigerator. The trace odour of sweat. Her clothes hung upon nails.
He reaches out to touch her wrist but Rosa pulls back, the words passing unthought out his mouth.
Some day, Rosa, you should marry me. I am only a fisherman, it is true. But I will pay off your TV. Maybe even buy you a jeep. I will buy you some furniture for your clothes. I’ll give you all the limes you want.
Rosa stares at his sun-browned feet, the taped plastic sandals, the plump spread toes. The big toe on his left foot missing a toenail.
Copyright © 2019 by Paul Lynch