Where the Waves Break

February 7, 2017

My apologies for the lack of contact, I was forced to travel all over the old continent in search of her memories. I traveled from Gibraltar to Lazio, went as far north as Gdansk, but found nothing of her. I know you will forgive me since you know the value she had in my life, but... I still find myself unable to go back since I found a trace of her in Britanny. In desperation, I decided to travel through this country, a place she never visited.

However, it was on the coast of Saint-Malo that I found her image by the sea. That night, the waves were breaking against the rocks as if they were reciting her name between foam and wind. I heard her voice, sweet, carried by the tides, a song I would swear I would recognize anywhere.

Since Saint-Malo, my wandering became even more erratic, as if guided by an impossible map written in the foam. I crossed the Breton coast, braving the biting wind at Finistère, contemplated the wild cliffs of Normandy, where the tide seemed to engulf everything in its blind hunger. I descended to the silent beaches of La Rochelle and continued to the deserted sands of Biarritz, where the waves rose like glass walls. Each port, each breakwater seemed to murmur fragments of a forgotten language. Although my footsteps followed the coastline like an unconscious ritual, the answer did not come. Only then, in a bitter mirage, could I see the reflection of her figure.

Since then I can't tear myself away from the shore. Every dawn, every twilight, I find myself sitting in front of the ocean, waiting for the melody to take me to her. The water promises me her return... or my disappearance. That's when I heard her voice like a soft dying moan, it said an address, Corsica.

The area itself is not pleasant; we are in winter and the frost is already in my bones, you know well that in the land below we are these days in shirts, you remember well that in our meetings with Leonore, shorts, beers and fire were not lacking. Why did you have to travel through this place? The last place I found your details was at the Hotel Casa Rossa.

So it was that in one morning, I saw her figure, bright and beautiful as before in Melbourne. I did not fear the icy waters, I threw myself towards her. The sea took me hostage... little I remember, swallowing salt and being cold made me lose my earthly reason, but it let me see her.

I don't know how long I was submerged in that salty blackness. The cold became a distant memory, and the surf a primitive cradle. Then I saw her.

An endless beach of white sand opened before my closed eyes. The sky, unnaturally blue, pulsed like a sick heart. She stood there, bare feet caressing the foam. Her dress billowed, but the wind was gone. Her hair, once so vivid, fell over her shoulders like dead seaweed. She asked me if I followed you here... her voice sounded like a broken melody, echo of something that should never have been remembered.

I tried to get closer, but my legs sank into the sand as if I were walking on a bed of corpses. Every step was a plea. Every meter, a crime against sanity.

She smiled. It was not the smile I knew in Melbourne. This one was pained, worn, as if on her lips nestled the sadness of a thousand seas.

"You've forgotten too, haven't you?"

I wanted to shout no, that I remembered every instant, every glance, every promise we wove under that strange sky... but the words died in my throat, transformed into bubbles.

She extended her hand towards me. I took it without hesitation, feeling her icy touch, melting between my fingers. Her skin, on contact, fragmented like foam hitting rock.

“Come with me...” she whispered, "the ocean sings for you too."

And then, the sea opened in two like an abyss, swallowing the beach, the sky, her and me, in a last lullaby of salt and death.

When I opened my eyes again, I lay on the shore, my body trembling like a fish out of water. Blurry faces pulled me away from the edge, distant voices called me to the surface... but my ears heard only their song, farther and farther away, farther and farther in. I was being pulled back to life, yes... but a part of me, perhaps the only part that mattered, had already gone down with it.

I felt rough hands clinging to my arms, voices distorted by the saltpeter shouting words I did not understand. I struggled, I think, kicked like a dying animal, trying to get back into the water. The ocean had promised something. She was there. They couldn't take her away from me again....

I remembered the first time Leonore dragged me into the water. It was another beach, another time. The Melbourne sun was scorching our skin and she was laughing, that bright laugh that now I could only hear as a dying echo among the waves.... For a moment I felt that way when I saw her, though memory fades because man is weak. The afflictions we go through would be less if we were not bent on so much imagination, reminiscence is a chain that binds us towards remembering this mundane plane instead of enjoying the unremarkable present.

And so, every night I wake up drenched in nightmares and salt, I feel that the ocean has left invisible scars under my skin, lines of saltpeter that slowly drag me into its realm. The world of men no longer calls me; their lights, their voices, everything reaches me as if I were under meters of water, distorted and alien. Only the song of the sea calls me now, promising me a perfect oblivion. I don't know if one day I will manage to walk among them again as one more, or if I will end up dissolving in the foam, name forgotten among indifferent currents.

I don't care how much the mainland tries to keep me away. The ocean has marked me. I will not end until I find it again, even if it means leaving behind everything I was.