Episode Details

The rumbling swell woke me up in front of a breakwater wall that blocked my view of the sea, but the water sprays climbed above it, like a ranging whale expelling air from its blowholes, in each assault with the force of a geyser. Through the windshield of the car, I spotted Leire walking over the dike without caring about getting soaked from the volatilized foam in the air; she was barefoot to walk on her own.

I opened the door and shouted her name, assuming she wouldn’t hear me. Returning to the car, I removed my patent-leather shoes, dress blues, beret, and tie, which were already starting to bother me after the formalities of the wake.

Although autumn arrived, it was still September, and the nights were still mild. I bolted on that washed concrete until I got beside her and asked her what the sea was called in Basque.

“Itsaso,” she replied. There was also a word for the late Joshua: “indar,” which means strength. I agreed. I couldn’t help but wonder where he got that laid-back vibe. Did she know?

“It was something passed down through their family,” she explained. “But it wasn’t the kind of gift that could be freely given. It had to be returned to the earth at the first sign of corruption.”

 “I don't quite understand what you meant,” I said. 

“He didn't commit suicide. It wasn’t an accident. It was bound to happen.”

Without acknowledging defeat, after relentlessly battering the boulders, the waves receded with a deep sigh. A slow but determined rolling motion began, as many tons of salty water surged back, shaking with white crest towards us. That formidable blue monster that the night concealed unleashed its full power, causing the earth to tremble. I thought it was time for us to retreat. I was unprotected in that dike with those dark masses rocking to assault once again. And Leire struck me as strange when she spoke about Joshua’s fate. The feeling of not knowing where I was treading with the woman I was sleeping with when Joshua ignored her, afflicted me, if by affliction is meant causing pain or trouble.

Would Leire recall Joshua's most loving caresses? She was moving towards the end of that dark breakwater, right where the beast had kicked, sweeping away everything in its path, and whatever I was shaking, following the beat of the same swell, which had regrouped for a heart-rending charge, I found myself unable to accompany Leire, who followed her walk unperturbed by such a threat, a walk with love and death.

I was losing her, and I knew it. Why fool myself? If things had been different, I wouldn’t have felt such crystals lodged in my throat, those that prevented me from shouting their name with the feeling of my gut. Without Joshua’s natural flair, “indar”, the same strength I needed to make her hear me over that rumble, I chose to kneel and sit on the concrete while the water sprays came to dress me in bubbles.

I was weakness and loneliness with outstretched arms. I searched for Leire in the darkness, but I couldn't see her anymore. I remembered those whispers when I stealthily approached her, when she told me that her warmth was reserved for someone else but me. But I was a star of mutable light and candor was touch, and love a game full of curiosity and defiance. Like a mélange in which globules of iridescent walls fluctuated, emerged, and exploded where I caught glimpses of pretensions, hopes, fascinations, paroxysms of the soul and flesh and blood, presumptions, whims, silences, and absences, quarrels of dissatisfaction and mistakes. Leire loving me, and I loving Leire—the mirror of lies.

In reality, it all boils down to a fundamental mismatch: she getting lost on the jetty, and me waiting for that elusive miracle that lovers always yearn for. Why did I compel myself to endure so much? It would have been enough to go to the car, and that pain would never reach its peak. But no, in the narrow world of lovers, there are only two paths: the one th