A Small Blue Bottle (Part 1 of 2)

- Tell me more about the sea. I like to hear the stories and imagine how immense it must be... maybe even scary...

- It is like an enormous lake, but its waters are always wild, even when they seem calm. It is salty, deep... and cold... In the middle of the night when all the noises disappear, you can hear its roar, like the one of a restless dragon, claiming ownership of something that had always been his, but which had been stolen by some cruel and unfair god...

- I want to go and see it… and feel it... Will you take me there one day?

She looked at me with dreamy pleading eyes, full of a strange and extremely sweet anticipation.

- ...Please?

- I will, yes. One day...

And her green eyes looked to a distant point, longing for the trip... imagining a large auburn dragon, lying on a vast sandy beach, stuck in the anxiety of an unexplained emptiness, roaring restless and helpless, tormented by dreams of freedom and always regretting a great loss.

I was born on the island, on an autumn Friday. Perhaps for this reason, I had always had a close and intimate contact with the sea and the winds, throughout my whole life. They had always been as much a part of me as the blood running through my veins. When I was a boy, the first thing I used to do in the morning was to open my window and look at the sea, to see which side the wind was blowing to. Grandson of a fisherman, I learned how to read the signs of nature and have a rough idea of the weather forecast.

My grandfather used to get up very early in the morning and go to the sea, to collect the net he had placed the night before. I recall seeing him from afar, standing on the boat and bringing the net up full of fishes, at the time they abounded in the bay calm waters. He used to send us some for lunch. I was a child but I knew we had an affinity with the sea and the fishes. My mother said his ancestors were Spaniards.

He was a tall man, but walked half bent by the weight of the years. He had a hooked nose and wore dark rimmed glasses. His bald head was almost always covered with a classic grey felt hat. He wore white shirts with rolled up sleeves and grey pants. On special days or Sundays, he used to wear a pinstriped black suit and matched hat, kept for those occasions. It was quite funny seeing my grandfather all lined up, when on most days, he seemed to wear the same old and dull clothes. He lived on the mainland, to where we moved over when I was five years old.

The island was always in our sight when we opened the windows facing east.

My father taught me how to swim in the sea. I loved spending hours in the warm waters of the bay, swimming and learning how to hold my breath under water. In the summer, the waters were always green except on days with southerly winds, when they were blurred and drab. On clear days in the winter the ocean looked like an oversized mirror. On windy days it always had the same brownish tone, with the waves breaking up, violent, against the rocks and walls of houses built too close to the tide line. I used to spend hours looking at the sea with my thoughts far away, being lulled by the distinctive sound of the waves that constantly and insistently lapped the shore. I loved to walk along the beach with my feet in the water, treading the soft white sands. The sea was my most natural element. It was where I felt more comfortable, quieter and more secure within the boundaries of the respect I had for its greatness and its untamed power.

She had never been confronted with such a powerful and misunderstood force like that dark green vastness, speckled with short white lines in the distance.

When we got to the place I loved as a child and I stopped the car, we jumped off and walked side by side, to the edge of the cliff. I could feel the apprehension and anxiety emanating from her as she tried to control the pace of her steps. She then opened a huge smile and breathed the salty air in, with both her nose and mouth. She seemed hungry for the sea and that moment was a major milestone in her life, when she would finally meet the great, restless, roaring and fearless dragon way down the cliff.

She then put her hand into her bag and rescued a small blue bottle out. There was a small rolled piece of paper tied up with a fine red thread. A small detail, however, called my attention for the exceptional refined element she remembered to implement: the cork was sealed with wax. She thought of everything, incredible as it might have seemed to me. The intention of maintaining the message protected, dry and intact with that subtle detail surprised me to the point of amusement for her cleverness. I would not have thought of that... ever...

- What have you got there?

- It's a message I wrote. My thing... it is not worth bothering yourself with it.

She flung the bottle into the sea, before I could even think on doing anything about that.

Standing at the top of the cliff, we both watched the sea roaring down there with its unrestrained fury, its arms of waves and hands of foam, welcoming and carrying away the bottle that contained an innocent secret message. She raised her hand, but stopped halfway, when she realized that I had noticed her almost involuntary gesture.

- Who were you going to greet? Neptune? Or were you going to wave goodbye to the bottle? I do not believe that at your age you still believe in sea gods and secret messages. You gotta be kidding me...

She blushed, showing an almost feigned irritation. She looked at me and murmured an expletive. Then she told me in a loud voice:

- There’s no use in talking to you about some things. You are very rational... you have no imagination. When I was young you were much more... acceptable... You know what? You lack imagination. This is why your life is so predictable and colourless.

- Well, it's true. At least I know exactly where I’m stepping on. Don’t you think it is better?

She turned away impatiently and walked back to the car. She did not have many arguments against my sad reality. I laughed out loud. My eyes followed the young woman walking away from me, while my thoughts unfurled the threads of time, trying to find a reference point. I turned back to the cliff, overlooking the vast and endless sea and said to myself, in a low voice:

- Where have I lost the ability to dream and fantasize, anyway? When have I stopped hearing the dragon roar on the sands of the beach, chained in its own fears and anxieties? When have my own problems blinded me to the beauty of imagination and my ability to dream?

- Let's go!

She was sitting at the car wheel, honking impatiently. She had an urgent need to get to the beach. She wanted to have her feet drenched in the fresh salty water. I hurried into the car beside her. She looked like a child on her birthday, rushing to the site of the party. I laughed at her. She simply drove to the end of the road and almost without ensuring that the car had stopped, she jumped out, got rid of her shoes and ran on the soft sand that squeaked at every step she took.

She stopped when she reached the edge of the water line. I watched her from afar, studying her reactions. She stepped ahead, then walked a step back, turned around, looked at me and then ran towards the waves breaking nearby. She laughed and jumped the waves, soaking her clothes without any worry. I saw the same child who used to hear the stories about dragons and the great and wide sea, facing fearlessly her initial shock and behaving as if she had always been as close to it as I had since my boyish days.

***

- Do you hear it?

- Uh-huh... It's calm... It seems like it is purring...

Lying on the couch at the porch, she had her eyes closed and her head leaning on my legs. She smiled, then she jumped up, wide-eyed, looking at me as if she had had the gleam of a brilliant idea.

- I wonder where the bottle is. Do you think anyone has found it?

- It must be on the other side of the beach. The tides usually carry the pieces of wood from one side to the other... the bottle must not be far away...

She was serious and seemed disappointed.

- Oh. I thought it was going so much further away...

- Sometimes ... it will depend on the force of the tides...

I tried to keep her hopeful, but I was not even sure of what I had said. She laid her head on my legs again and listened to the silence of the night and to the dragon snoring softly... She fell asleep right there. I took her in my arms and laid her on the bed that she had prepared, after dinner. I had to sleep in the living room because the small kitchenette that we rented for a week had one room only.

Every morning, we strode along the beach, holding each other, while we washed our feet in the water. We used to have lunch in the village and hike nearby, but the sea was our most frequent point. We used to spend hours and hours watching the waves break or the seagulls fly, feeling the stillness of life and without saying anything.

In the morning of the day we were prepared to travel back to our normal lives, I did not see her when I got up. The door was unlocked. It was still early in the morning. She had gone out for a walk... alone. I prepared a fresh coffee and waited a little, but there was no sign of her. Before I got too worried, I put a sweatshirt on and went out looking for her at the beach. I followed a track of footprints left in the sand by a pair of small feet I assumed were hers. I found her sitting on a fallen log and watching the skyline, with the dreamiest expression I had ever seen on her face.

She looked different. I got closer and sat beside her, saying nothing. We were both looking at the horizon. She sighed.

- I have never found the bottle. It must have been taken too further away from here... This is good.... I think...

I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her closer to me. She leaned her head on my chest and fell silent.

- Do you wanna talk about it?

- No.

I respected her privacy and secrecy. She probably did not believe that I could understand the fantasy she created around the message which I could never come to know the content. I stood up and invited her to walk back to our quarters and eat something.

- Can we stay a day longer? I want to be sure that I will not find the bottle smashed somewhere on the beach.

I raised an eyebrow. She scowled.

- Please...

- This was not the plan but that's okay. We have to see if we can stay in the kitchenette for one night longer.

She jumped up and smiled, hugging me and kissing my cheek.

- Thank you.

I tried to be a lenient father ever since she lost her mother. There was no harm in indulging once in a while, as she was not very demanding on her requests. The sea was a separate issue, however. It was a fascination she had since childhood, when she still believed both in fantasies and in dragons.

I admitted that I did not want to come back either. I felt so good, there at the beach. She behaved definitely like a legitimate daughter, demonstrating an enormous affinity with an element with which she came into contact for the first time that summer. The sea was our natural element. It was in our blood, undoubtedly.

My grandfather would be proud of his great-granddaughter.