perdido

Someone fell into the water tonight. I was at dinner, and afterwards took a walk on the boardwalk with my roommates. All of the sudden I heard a fretful familiar sound-a helicopter, close to the water. I laughed out loud and said “Very American.” I hadn’t heard a helicopter or a plane overhead in over a month.

We walked further down the boardwalk and heard an ambulance siren just behind us gathering momentum. As commonplace as these sounds are to me when I am home, here in Spain, especially in Malaga, where the town exists around the water, and where crime is something that you watch on noticias, the sounds scared me. They were unnerving. I wasn’t the only one. Around this time the beach is crawling with children, families eating, selling their wares, young people falling in love. Old ladies started to look around, counting family members. Mothers began collecting children into strollers. Men rolled up their sleeves as if there was work to do.

We walked on a little further and saw the men from the ambulance prepped to set up triage on the sand. The helicopter came closer to the water, shining a giant strobe light onto the water. People began to talk- a student, someone young-was missing.

A crowd started to gather at the ocean’s edge. People settled around the site in groups. Women crossed themselves. For the first time in over a month, I was afraid. The air even changed, it was colder, and it was less forgiving. The warmth that had beckoned me to walk to the night this evening was now intolerant, unindulgent. There was no benevolence behind the sound of spray that once seemed like melodious wedding song, now the trembling of ocean reaching sand and crashing against rocks resonated a funeral march, or at the very least, a pentatonic processional on the verge of a direful denouement, a bleak tragedy whose cacophonous soundtrack is also the culprit.

My love, the sea, had killed someone.

Here in Malaga, a life was gone.

The unsettling electricity of the boardwalk concentrated its efforts on prayer for the lost child. This gave me hope, although my feelings were not shared by the experienced rescue workers, or by the shrewd fisherman, who stood by their boats docked on the sand with knowing somber faces, as they remarked to one another and shook their heads-not a callous gesture, but as recognition. They knew whom this lost child was up against. They had known this sea all their life. And they knew what the outcome would be, regardless of the tears shed or the prayers shouted.

With every fiber in my soul I wanted to shout something. My insides were screaming-“THERE MUST BE SOMETHING! ANYTHING!” common sense and fear of being arrested prevailed, and I stood there silent, with a look of utter disbelief on my face.

How could the sea do this? Here, in Malaga, where everything is beautiful?

I looked around in part to psychically bolster some kind of support from the other onlookers. All the youth seemed just as touched as I, but they dared not say a word. The older people looked on towards the sea, stoic and stern, some holding their loved ones, some holding crucifixes. They had a look of knowing of their faces, much like the fisherman, but less homage and more placid. They, too, know this sea. Much like the fisherman.

It is more that the residents understand, however. Here in nirvana, as only a traveler, one forgets what it is to belong to a paradise. Not just holiday here, and partake of the wares of traveling salesman, or sample the fish from the men who board those ships, but to live here, to exist here along side the sea. She is an overwhelming force, of beauty and sheer savagery, and with all paradises, her beauty is only matched by her brutality.

Beauty takes as much from you as she gives to you.

That is what I saw on the looks of the people who stared into the sea as the helpers tried in vain to find the lost child. I saw this in their faces because they have seen this before, and they knew…

The child was never found, the student. The search was abandoned, and last I heard, arrangements were being made to have a service by the sea.