Although I recognize that I am very addicted to reading, the book of records has not yet been visited by my curiosity, although that detail, after what I have experienced ….
Because let’s see, you tell me if there is a category of how to vomit what you have not taken, for no less than six or seven times, in just three hours.
And all because on this new occasion that has allowed me to return to this island, to my island, where the silence fills me with calm, the constant changes of light gladden my soul to see every detail differently than before, this character, which has already emerged in a couple of previous stories, Ernesto, came up with the brilliant idea of going out for a ride with his boat, Magua, after all, the island is not only land, it is also the sea that surrounds it, sorry, the ocean that surrounds it.
And here I am, in a boat that seems minuscule to me in this immensity of water, vomiting up to what cannot exist in my stomach and seeing a certain twisted smile on the face of the skipper of this liquid hell in which I have submerged.
I should have assumed something, after all, after leaving at dawn and seeing the sun rise beyond the Orchilla lighthouse, the lighthouse that appeared in novels as the end of the world, there, in the middle of nowhere, in the liquid nothingness, Ernesto just stopped the engine and made a coffee with some cookies, which undoubtedly, tempered my stomach not a little.
So, there I am, in a kind of wooden swing, pushed by waves, for me huge and that he, the skipper, just points out, that the sea is a little restless… restless says the damned, waves of more than three meters high, and he calls it restless… Fuck, when big waves come, I do not know what the hell he will call it, a swing, by the way, in which I have already known firsthand, many of its corners, after all, every blow that gave me after just three hours of crossing, attest to that knowledge.
I remember the figure of him, lying on one of those few corners of the deck, loose, free, like someone who is not subject to some ups and downs that I was still wondering how I had not jumped into the air, and asking myself questions.
-And tell me Jorge… What do you think, pointing me to an indeterminate point of… nowhere?
At this point, between what my stomach says it still has to take out, what my legs and arms are trying to hold in an endless back and forth, and my eyes that cannot be fixed anywhere, because there is nothing to look at… Or maybe there is?
Because there, in the distance, I saw something, something jumping, something dark at first and bright moments later.
I tell him, between scared not knowing what kind of sea monster lurks out there and expectant to see how, my answer draws a big smile from him.
His answer is limited to start the engine and, do not ask me how the hell I know, but the boat, of which I know every corner with edges to make a purple, the boat I say, I feel happy, the engine does not sound tired and…damn!!!, how is it possible that the waves have disappeared, because there is no swaying of hell running my stomach?
I don’t have much more time to turn these ideas into questions to Ernesto, because he is busy between a smile that shines on his face and the hands that take the rudder and make him keep a course towards….
What the hell….?
Next to me, I swear to God,,,,by whatever you want, next to me is the biggest fish I have ever seen in my life, at least this close, I don’t know if it counts to have seen a hake of three kilos in Mercadona, but believe me, this one is considerably bigger.
They are pilot whales, Ernesto tells me.
I can not fail to see a bulbous head, big-headed, dark, topped with a mouth … I smiled!
I can’t stop looking at it…it must be, I don’t know, 10 meters, 8 meters, fuck, it seems to me the most beautiful animal in the world, and so I let Ernesto know.
He laughs, and admits that he expected nothing less from me, someone who has never left the mainland and who has only seen his cousins at the zoo and in documentaries.
Dolphins, for God’s sake, I’m with dolphins.
And there I am, lying on Magua’s gunwale, with one hand half-heartedly touching a beautiful creature, afraid of scaring it if I dare.
Half incorporated I see that he is not alone, they are never alone, Ernesto tells me, they are the most social beings that exist.
I can’t say anything, I am hypnotized by the swaying of those bodies next to us, when I sit up, I see that we are surrounded by no less than a dozen of them.
They already know her, Ernesto tells me, they know Magua.
I guess my face is a poem, to say the least, because I don’t understand anything at all.
- You see Jorge, a few years ago, I had finished my fishing day, I operated my pillo a little late, so, as now, I put myself to the pairo, something like dead center, and I began to smoke a little while I read. In an unspecified time, I began to notice that the keel, osease the column of the boat, was shaking, it sounded as if something was scratching it…after a while I saw that it was a family of them, that attracted by the remains of my fishing and perhaps for fun, the youngest ones were scratching themselves with my Magua.
-Since then, and I always try to be in the same waters and on the same dates, I usually stop by from time to time to see if I see the same group again.
-Like today.
I know I’m listening to him, I know what he’s telling me, but I can’t take my eyes off such beauty, it’s as if the water is sliding down his skin… I can’t see it, but under that skin there’s a lot of muscles that make him barely move as he moves through the water.
I don’t know what to say.
I’m practically paralyzed by something I never believed…a smile that greets me on a head as fat as a watermelon, dark, a huge body for me and that, far from flooding me with fear, I still have the memory of Jaws.
They’re beautiful, I mutter to myself….
- They are, Ernesto tells me very softly, they and their cousins, the carnal ones, the direct ones, whatever you want to call them, all of them, are, together with the whales, the most magnificent beings of the sea.
I can only nod and stare at him and whisper…Thank you.
- Why do you think I told him to come in his bathing suit?
*** Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***
Sigo aqui 