Initially, we wanted to stay home; however, we traveled to the most distant and exotic place we could find.
The plane had barely taken off when we began to see mountain peaks below us, distant and scattered, emerging like islands from a sea of cottony clouds that stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Are you okay?” I asked Caroline.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she answered, seemingly agitated.
“I just wanted to know…”
“Are you going to be like this the whole trip? Don’t be a downer.” She said, putting an end to the conversation.
Better to stay quiet, I thought to myself. With infinite patience I waited for my emotions to quiet down until they settled like mud at the bottom of my memory.
We were traveling West, crossing the ocean and chasing the sun in an eternal sunset that lasted nearly eight hours, almost as long as the trip itself. Eight hours, I thought. Twice that would be sixteen, and two more makes eighteen. Yes, I said to myself, eighteen… eighteen…
A number so wedged into my brain that I would never be able to get it out of my head for the rest of my existence.
We arrived in paradise. It was hot; sticky hot, almost suffocating. It was nighttime, making the heat even more intensely palpable due to its contrast with the freezing cold that we came from. Just outside customs, a driver was waiting for us with our names on a sign that he held high above his head so we could spot him in the distance. He drove us to the hotel. When we arrived, we were taken to a preferential reception area to check in. While completing the check-in procedures, we were brought fresh juices from the hotel as a welcome courtesy. They had a pleasant flavor, if a little unusual for our tastes.
We were assigned a concierge for our stay who drove us to our bungalow. Along the way, he pointed out the different areas of the tourist complex as we passed them.
Our room in the bungalow felt like stepping into a cold storage warehouse. We asked the concierge if he could turn the temperature up. He adjusted it to our liking and explained in great detail how to operate the air conditioning. He also explained that the drinks in the minibar, including a liquor typical of the country, were available to us with no additional cost.
Due to the time difference, and despite how late at night it was in the local time, we were a little hungry, and we asked the concierge if there was something small we could eat before going to bed. The concierge commented that the kitchen was already closed, but he would send us a snack. After unpacking and eating sandwiches and fruit, exhausted as we were from the journey, we lay down and slept soundly.
In the morning, we woke up late and decided to have breakfast in the room. Later, we went for a walk around the tourist complex to get our bearings. It was then that we realized just how enormous it was. After crossing the hotel lobby and reception, the building gives way to a central plaza, and from this plaza the paths leading to the bungalows and apartment buildings stretch out in all directions. In the plaza, as in the other areas of the complex, one could find—strategically situated—the different services that were available, from stores stocked with anything one might need, to cafés, themed restaurants, buffets, meeting rooms, two spas, nightclubs for both the younger and older crowds, gyms with different specialized workout classes, a casino, a golf course and mini golf course, multiple recreation areas with activities for all ages, various swimming pools… All in all, a tiny, concentrated world, equipped with everything one could need to live without having to leave the premises, which were so large that some people, to get from one point to another, rode around on electric scooters.
After our exploratory expedition, exhausted from walking from one end of the complex to the other, we ended up on the beach lying in hammocks beneath palm leaf umbrellas.
The waiters at the hotel’s beach bars were constantly approaching to offer us something to drink. Even if we weren’t particularly in the mood for anything, they insisted on bringing us something, some kind of cocktail, anything we might like. They were wearing Santa hats, which was disconcerting in the 95° weather. The hats were, luckily, the only detail in our surroundings that reminded us of the Christmas season we were presently in, whose familiar motifs we were trying to escape by any means necessary, that being the primary motivation for our trip. In front of us, close to the shore where the waves rolled in to languish, a few boys of around eighteen were happily playing soccer… yes, eighteen, eighteen, the eternal refrain. They played with such vivacity. Undoubtedly, they felt as if they were immortal, eternal. It never would have crossed their minds—carried away as they were in the game, concentrating on the ball, running, jumping, yelling to each other, doing tricks with their agile, muscular bodies—how fragile their existence was.
We ate beside the beach at one of the several restaurants available at the resort. The buffet was an explosion of stimuli: smells, colors, shapes, a gigantic variety of food, much of which was unfamiliar to us… All the different options gave rise to a temptation to try everything, immediately and without restraint. We didn’t know where to start or what to choose. Each of us selected something different so that we could sample a wider array of dishes.
In the afternoon, we took a nap to rest and finish recovering from the jet lag. Sitting in the bed, I read for a while, and from time to time, I observed Caroline as she slept beside me. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically with each breath. Just by stretching my foot out a few inches, I could brush against her foot. Just by reaching out my hand, I could stroke her hair. But I still felt that a colossal distance had come between us, separating us. Bridging that distance and recovering something between us that we lost in a tragic moment of our lives was also the point of that trip; a runaway trip to escape from our own shadows.
That night we got ready and perused the different themed restaurants to decide where we would eat on Christmas Eve. The hotel staff had warned that we should book a table in advance to make sure we got one. We went with Mercure, a French place that seemed both fancy and discreet, with an attractive menu for a special night without overly festive flavors that would remind us of the date. Afterwards, we had a light dinner at one of the buffets and sat in the central plaza enjoying a cocktail while watching a tribal dance performance indigenous to the area.
The next day, I intended to sign us up for as many of the activities organized by the hotel as possible. Every day, at practically any time of the day, there was some kind of special. From aerobics classes to a wide variety of competitive sports, including archery, theater, dance, crafts, and excursions; in essence, an endless number of options to keep busy. And that was precisely the point: to stay busy, leaving not even a second to think, keeping the mind occupied at all times with this activity or that to avoid it from consuming itself. But Caroline didn’t want to sign up for anything. None of the activities interested her or appealed to her in the slightest. She was only interested in lying in a hammock on the beach, beneath the shade of the palm leaves, and going for an occasional dip in the warm sea.
“Caroline…” I started to say.
Caroline rolled over in her hammock, turning her back to me. She was watching a couple of young men who, a few yards away, split open coconut after coconut, serving its liquid to the tourists who approached their improvised stand.
“We can’t stay stuck like this forever.” I finished the sentence. “This isn’t going to change anything. And we still have our lives ahead of us.”
Caroline got up with a gesture of unconcealed animosity and went to walk along the beach.
I looked over at the boys with the coconuts and saw there were three of them. They were dark-skinned, cheerful, and each of them had a sparkling white smile that seemed to never dim… three… three times six is eighteen… eighteen… eighteen…
I followed after Caroline. She walked briskly at first, but as she got further, she slowed her pace. Finally I caught up to her. We ended up walking together, in silence, our feet sinking softly into the flour-fine sand, under palm trees that leaned diagonally in what seemed like an impossible angle, leaning all the way to the very edge of the sea, with its infinite shades of turquoise blue. The waves lapped at our ankles, coming and going in a continuous flow, like the valves of a heart contracting and relaxing, and similarly, impossible to imagine that its flow will one day stop. And I counted our steps… one, two, three… eighteen…, eighteen…, eighteen…
In the following days we ended up creating a comfortable routine that allowed us to avoid thinking entirely. We got up, ate breakfast, went to the beach, had lunch, took a nap, went for a final dip in one of the resort’s pools, got ready, ate dinner, watched one of the nightly performances, and went to bed.
In one of the pools, they offered a basic scuba diving class. Never in my life had I considered scuba diving, but it could be a fun activity, and I wouldn’t have another chance to try it, so it seemed worth taking advantage of the opportunity. I mentioned it to Caroline, who thought I’d lost my mind. Of course I couldn’t count on her. I signed up alone.
The final practice of the diving course was a dive at sea, near La Solitaria Island, just a half hour by boat from where we were staying, and a true natural paradise. It took a lot of convincing for Caroline to join me, but in the end she reluctantly agreed. She waited for me on the boat while we completed the dive.
The dive was our baptism into scuba diving, and the experience was monumental. We dove into the middle of a coral reef. The scenery shaped by the action of nature- the fauna, the colors, the light- were dazzling. The sun penetrated the transparent water, and everything before me had an unusual brightness that I never would have been able to imagine under the sea. I felt myself floating, wrapped in the warm water, rocked by a gentle, lulling current. That feeling, I thought, as I enjoyed the spectacle before my eyes, must be the closest thing to feeling protected in a mother’s womb. I don’t know why we ever leave. It was absurd to abandon that comfort and come into the world just to end up dying one day. It didn’t make sense. Even less so considering that as we made our way through life, we would never be truly happy, no matter how hard we tried. It seemed as if we had a congenital defect, as if in the moment we reached a state of true happiness, some spark would ignite inside us to burn the whole thing up. That was life, I thought to myself, now almost a little dizzy due to the swaying of my body in the current. That was life, I repeated to myself. Absurd, meaningless. And we, wielding our infinite capacity, were determined to complicate it further.
I fell into a sort of drowsiness. I had to go back, but I didn’t want to return to the mundane reality that awaited me as soon as I surfaced and we embarked again. I had already been submerged for almost eighteen minutes… eighteen… eighteen… In that state of absolute wellbeing, it was incomprehensible that someone, at some point in their life, could suddenly feel despondent and sick, and have to go to the doctor, and would have to undergo invasive tests to find the root of their ailments, and that they would discover that a part of their own body was rebelling against the natural order and had begun to grow and grow, of its own volition, with a life of its own, apart from the rest of their body and their will. It was their body, but at the same time, it was another. And so this person would begin to ask himself, “Why? Why me? Why now? Why can’t I fight it? Why is it stronger than I am?” And this process would occur so naturally, so astonishingly smoothly, just barely concealed beneath the surface, fitting into life perfectly as if it were a natural development of it, like the underwater current that rocked me, moving me from one side of the coral reef to the other. Try as you might, you were never going to avoid it. Like in a dream. Or, more precisely, a nightmare. No matter what, you would lose control of your own body and your future… eighteen… just when it seemed like you were starting to gain control of it…
A few days later, the pause in our lives marked by those days of vacation, or whatever they were, was over. I suggested to Caroline that we go for one final walk on the beach, to see if we could reach a kind of seawall that closed off the small bay where the hotel was located and discover what lay on the other side, what kind of scenic view we were missing out on. After an initial resistance, she reluctantly agreed, perhaps because, being our last day, it would be the final concession she’d have to grant me.
We began to walk along the beach. After a few yards, we came across the young men playing soccer again. The ball, which escaped from them and came flying towards us, came to rest at my feet. I couldn’t resist giving the ball a few kicks before passing it back into play. The boys were surprised and invited me to join the game. I told them I was too old, but they came over to me, insisting with youthful confidence and determination. Ultimately, I relented. I told Caroline it would only be a few minutes. By her sulky expression, I could tell she was not at all happy to be left on her own. But honestly, I just felt the sudden urge to test my abilities, and I was eager to see how I would fare at my age in front of these boys, so full of vitality.
With the first few passes I made, I felt the return of the ecstatic feeling I had forgotten since my teenage years, when my biggest dream in life was to become a professional soccer player. I ran, I dribbled, I kicked the ball from large distances with measured control, I launched and received passes, and I executed plays so precise, it was as if I had planned them out with a ruler. At one point, while I was close to the opposing team’s goal, one of my teammates advanced along the sideline, skillfully dodging several opposing defenders, passing me the ball with impeccable precision. Then I launched into the air like a high jumper, and kicking my legs in a scissor motion in a textbook Chilean move, I struck the ball decisively and netted it in the top corner, a goal worthy of being included in a soccer anthology. All the players were left speechless.
As I lifted myself from the ground and brushed away the sand that stuck to my sweaty skin, my teammates surrounded me, shouting with joy, jumping, cheering with uninhibited joy, and they threw themselves on me, elated, as if they were one body. Then, to celebrate the goal, they all grabbed me, even the players from the other team, and as if I were a rag doll, they threw me into the air several times amidst their constant cheering. The boys wanted to start another match, but I was worn out. I had used up all my energy. I turned to leave amidst the sound of their applause. Caroline had been watching from the edge of the makeshift field. When I reached her, she hugged me so tightly I felt like she might choke me. It seemed as if she intended to merge with my body. I felt every inch of her skin and her labored breathing pressing against my chest. After a few seconds, she whispered in my ear.
”Please tell me it’s not real. Tell me we’re not really living this. Tell me it’s just a nightmare and we’ll wake up soon. Tell me that the laws of nature won’t allow parents to have to bury their eighteen-year-old son.”
A tear escaped Caroline’s eyes and, with our faces so pressed together, I felt the warm liquid roll down my cheek. Then I sensed that Caroline, without moving, shifted her gaze away. It came to rest far behind me, lost on the horizon, on the horizon of the sea, the horizon of the sea that collected all the tears we shed.
José Luis Cubillo holds a degree in Cinematography (Screenwriting and Directing). He came to cinema through literature, which he had already been practicing earlier. Some of his short stories, included in the book “And If It Is Not Here, Where Is It?”, have been published in literary magazines in Spain, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. As a screenwriter, he wrote “Nijinsky. Marriage with God”, a biography of the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, winner of the award for Best Original Idea at the Global Motion Picture Awards (USA, 2018). As a director, his film “A Film in the Style of Jafar Panahi”, a tribute to the Iranian director Jafar Panahi and his film “This Is Not a Film”, is available on FILMIN and AMAZON.
