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Land in Sight
When I saw the floating body through my binoculars, I looked at my watch: midday. It was the right time.
Bobbing in the calm blue water off Miami Beach, the body looked bloated; it must have been the excess of liquid it had soaked up in the tides. While adjusting the high-power lenses to see better, I avoided focusing on the face, terrified of seeing our likeness.
Its skin shone, transparent, as if it were merely a temporary recipient of everything I saw wrapped around its already very swollen contours, as if there were nothing inside. But I was sorry to see the body limited to its packaging, polluting the sea with its restricted figure that contrasted with the openness of the water.
The waves did their work in a fabulous to-ing and fro-ing, a dance coordinated by submarine currents that my binoculars were unable to detect. The sun attacked me mercilessly from all sides, and I drew closer to the sand, pulling my wide-brimmed straw hat down so as not to abuse my face any more.
The body, with its rigid arms and legs, appeared to stiffen further with each surge, as if trying to free itself of the movement it could not control.
The indentations left around my eyes made my face hurt. I must have been pressing the binoculars too hard, so great was my excitement at seeing that it was really arriving. It seemed wiser to sit and wait for it to get closer without watching it intently, and I placed the binoculars on the sand and stretched out my legs.
“Hello.” A very old man in baggy Bermuda shorts, socks and sneakers spoke in such a hoarse voice that I raised my eyes to make sure the body hadn’t clambered out of the water and wasn’t already standing over me. I shivered.
“Hello,” I answered, knowing the old man hadn’t heard me. He walked slowly and carefully as if to avoid bending his knees too much and splintering his bones. He was still close to me, but his hearing must have been damaged and his interest in me appeared limited to that one word uttered out of politeness from between worn teeth.
In the sand, tiny crabs appeared to be conducting a Monday survey of the effects of the weekend on the terrain. There were white shells, some broken, some still intact, all rough-surfaced, with a few grains of the sand in which they had been buried still clinging to them. I picked out a few and arranged them in a pile next to me to wash later. I had a whole day off in front of me, but my fingers still hurt from the decorated ceramic slabs that appeared all around me in squares and diamonds if I closed my eyes for a few moments. My knees hadn’t yet been affected, but would be soon if I stayed in that job I had only recently begun.
Just the thought of it made me sigh. And I carelessly looked straight at the sun in an act of predictable and rather childish irritation, wanting to hurt myself. The hot circle rimmed with light marked me beyond my pupils, and in the darkness created by the solar brightness I saw the white hotel room before me again. It was not a vision; it was a memory, a memory of the previous night.
I had been going to meet some American friends in the Delano Hotel bar and was running late, feeling tired and didn’t know if I would be good Sunday-evening company. My muscles ached and my spirit had been domesticated, almost broken by the new reality that confronted me daily no matter where I turned. I felt myself becoming a slave to that landscape of shiny cars, women of all races and perfect rows of healthy palms. The landscape intoxicated me even more now that I had started keeping my head down, looking only at the slabs I helped lay. When I looked around on my way home or when I got out of the shower and saw where I was, I wasn’t sure if it was the right way round or inside out, or if it was worth turning my life upside down even more in order to find out.
In the hotel elevator I pressed the button carelessly and went up without noticing my mistake, stopping only on a very high floor. As soon as I stepped out, the door shut automatically and I found myself standing in a private corridor. I shouldn’t have been there and was surprised that the elevator had allowed me to do that.
The corridor was not very wide, and in front of me an enormous glass-paned window with a white curtain was set between two doors which in turn were next to two other doors. There were few rooms in that part of the hotel.
I heard a quiet whistling and followed it slowly to see where it was coming from. A chambermaid was absent-mindedly cleaning a room and had left the door ajar. I opened it silently. The view was breathtaking. And the room itself was so bright and so white that I thought I had gotten the wrong building and was in a luxury hospital or a chamber for mortals who, having reached some intermediate platform, were waiting to be taken to heaven.
The floor was wooden and painted white, and was the first thing I noticed now that I worked with paving materials. On the wide floorboards sat a bed, also white, with white sheets and blankets. The few items of furniture, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe, looked shy there, almost shrinking back so as not to compete with the dazzling sea outside and the spectacle of the afternoon, which had begun to be invaded by a thin violet line that would soon grow into darkness. I imagined what it must be like to be in that room, in that bed, late at night, and I backed away again to get a full view of the room.
I framed that vision in an imaginary rectangle and felt an uncontrollable urge draw me toward the bare window, its white curtains pulled wide open. I quickly walked over and flung open the window, a window that should never have been opened in that way by any guest according to the rules of that place.
“¿Qué pasa?” The flustered chambermaid came out of the bathroom holding a cloth and a spray bottle full of dark blue liquid.
“¿Qué pasa?” she asked again, and I pretended to be a clueless gringo who didn’t speak Spanish.
I raised both hands, already expecting handcuffs, like a criminal caught in the act, afraid I might be attacked. Her blue bottle looked dangerous and she seemed like the sort who loves to get stains out of everything.
I turned and began to leave with my hands still in the air so she could see that I had come in peace, was unarmed, and hadn’t stolen anything. And she followed after me with the bottle pointed at my stomach and the cloth in her other hand until I entered the elevator and went down. Before the doors shut, I could still see her serious, worried face, and thought that she should be more accustomed to seeing weird things in hotel rooms and in that part of town.
It was only after my second Coca-Cola that I calmed down. I had stopped drinking alcohol to save money; it was the only way I could afford to go with my friends to some of the places they went, like the bar at that hotel. Then I sorted out the sequence of what had happened, an obsession I had acquired after moving to America; it was a way for me to feel that I wasn’t losing control of the order and facts of my life.
I went over the entire scene again, blow by blow. The moment I had entered the room, the objects filling the deep white-on-white space, and what I had seen out at sea. I then deciphered the message hidden in the incident: meeting on Monday at noon. Afterwards, it was a relief to delve into the lazy end-of-day chatter. All I had to do was get home and prepare everything.
My thoughts came back to the Monday sand that surrounded me, my eyes open and hurting from the intense heat. I got up to see how far away the body was and saw that it was still coming. Opening my file of papers, I suppressed the urge to start organizing other memories. It had been good; it gave me a sense of security and reality, but was becoming increasingly difficult as time passed. In the beginning it had been natural, but now it was a tiring technique, organizing beginning, middle and end, who I had been, who I was and who I might become.
I pulled out a few papers and put the rest away, closing the Velcro of the purple plastic file, modern and attractive. There weren’t so many things to put away now, and I needed to start using them sparingly.
I prepared the bamboo tray I had bought at a one-dollar store in the exact size I wanted. And I placed my offerings on it. Two white flowers, two sheets of paper which had once been whiter, a medal on a red ribbon from when I was a young boy. I felt sad looking at the medal, but assured myself that it would have the destiny it deserved.
The tray stood out against the sand beside the pile of shells I had made next to my feet. I got up and waved my arms for it to hurry up, as I wanted to do other things with the rest of the day.
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